


Bioshock - Rapture: Alone with my City

by DanielPS



Series: Bioshock - Rapture: Paradise Lost / Alone with my City [2]
Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, BioShock References, BioShock: Minerva's Den, Gen, Multi, Rapture (BioShock)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 53
Words: 63,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanielPS/pseuds/DanielPS
Summary: It's been a decade since Rapture fell, since Dr Sofia Lamb murdered Edward's lover and left him alone in the crumbling city. With Lamb now gone, Rapture finds itself leaderless and on the final brink of being lost to the sea. Edward must save what remains of Rapture - but will a face from the past push him too to a brink of his own?
Series: Bioshock - Rapture: Paradise Lost / Alone with my City [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980736
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter One

**SEQUEL TO : "BIOSHOCK - RAPTURE _: PARADISE LOST"_**

**RAPTURE - 1968**

"He pressed one hand against the glass, straining to see clearly through the grime and condensation. He used his other hand to wipe some away, making a clear patch to peer through. The explosions had been far on the outer limits of Rapture, right where the sea floor fell away into that enormous abyss. He could just make out a huge cloud of dust and debris in the faint light given off by the city, expanding outwards, floating upwards. As he watched, some further explosions went off, brief flickers of light went off deep in the bedrock around one building in particular – Fontaine Futuristics.

Edward closed his strained eyes briefly, not having been able to bring himself to look upon that building for nearly a decade. When he did finally return to the explosive, animated scene unfolding, he could see that whatever was happening was unsettling that entire area – Fontaine Futuristics seemed to stagger, the whole building shifting somehow as its foundations began to twist and churn in the shattered seafloor.

"Something tiny, so very small that Edward nearly mistook it for another piece of projectile debris, shot up from the huge clouds of sand and dust, straight up towards the surface. What gave it away as being mechanically propelled was that it maintained its speed of ascent and trajectory – and the very faint beacon letting off intermittent flashes.

Finally, the ledge of seafloor that extended out over the abyss collapsed entirely, and crumbled away. With mixed emotions of satisfaction and incredible loss, Edward watched the collapse take the Fontaine Futuristics building with it – its lights only flickering out at the last moment as it too broke apart and vanished into the darkness.

Edward knew that the only explanation for such a disturbance to the seafloor in that part of the city, was Persephone. Someone, for some reason, had detonated the charges and cast that dismal jailhouse into the depths at long last. He slowly took in some breath and pulled away from the glass. He chuckled slightly, wondering if Sinclair had given any thought to the strength of those explosive when he had built Persephone – if they'd had to use them back in Rapture's prime years, it would have been interesting to see the face on Frank Fontaine when his building and primary Plasmid Production facility had been dragged down too.

He sighed then – something like that could have maybe been Rapture's salvation. No Plasmids – maybe even taking Frank Fontaine himself out of the picture too if he'd been in his office. Ryan wouldn't have been faced with shit-stirrers, plots to undermine him, all of which shook his standing with the cities populace and gave Dr Lamb the footing she needed.

Edward stopped suddenly just as he'd been stepping away – Dr Lamb! Could she have gone down with Persephone? She was nearly always there – her little fiefdom fortress. He knew that for a fact, after having spent nearly two full years watching the movements of the 'Rapture Family' in and out of Persephone, and only once or twice seeing Dr Lamb herself actually venture out into the city – both times he had failed miserably in his goal to pursue and exact revenge on the queen bitch herself. But she had always been steps ahead of him, Dr Lamb always had a way out of every situation.

" _Shit_ " – he spat out aloud. She did always have a way out, and he knew Persephone had one way out. What he had seen amongst the chaos just then, sailing towards freedom, had been Sinclair's old lifeboat. "Shit!" he growled again – that had to have been Dr Lamb making her escape from whatever had transpired down there, only she would have been able to access it and use it.

"Fuck it!" Edward swung the steel tube he held in his grip at the wall and shattered a loose slab of marble. He had pushed his loathing of Lamb and his lust for revenge deep into the back of him mind years ago, and with the help of the occasional shot of ADAM, he'd done quite well in co-existing with his repressed pain. But knowing now the Lamb bitch had escaped this hell, of her own making, without consequence or penalty, brought the anger racing back. Edward looked up at the ceiling, through it, beyond through the ocean to the surface. He tried to picture Dr Lamb wherever she would be now out in the open. With spittle and drool frothing and popping from his mouth, he cursed her.


	2. Chapter Two

**Dionysus Park**

Edward stood quietly by the glowing carousel, his back hunched slightly as it always did these days after years of crawling through ventilation ducts and crouching in the shadows. The floor was sodden, surface water still running across it, mounds of mouldy grime making the park feel more like a muddy meadow than the once grand establishment it was. The rotten furniture and decayed interiors left it smelling putrid and stale.

He couldn't believe, despite the horrific state it was in, that Dionysus Park was still even capable of being drained and ventured into once again, after all these years. If Simon Wales hadn't just gotten himself killed down in pumping station 5, it may have brought some comfort to his restless guilt over Rapture's design flaws to see how well this structure still resisted the weight of the ocean.

Edward began to slowly explore further, an open shotgun perched over one arm – already any of Rapture's spliced citizens in a mile's radius had come dashing to the park in hope of raiding a long-lost Gatherer's Garden. The squishy mess that coated the floor thankfully gave any approaching 'splicer' away quickly. He'd already broken into several El Ammo Bandito vending machines to stock up on ammo, which was his main reason for coming down to the park, and carried the load in a large satchel. He came to the Triton Cinema entrance, the steps heavily overgrown with coral. He recalled back before it flooded, that the snack bar and exclusive members lounge had stored a fair amount of Arcadia Merlot, Moonbeam Absinthe and Old Tom Whiskey – all of which were rapidly becoming scarce throughout Rapture. Since Ryan had died and the ADAM affliction had torn through the city, production of luxury consumables hadn't been on Dr Lamb's list of priorities.

Scouting quickly around for any sign or sound of splicers, Edward crept up the steps into the Cinema lobby. Just passed the ticket booth, he could make out most of the snack bar without venturing down into it – so simply opened his satchel, and began drawing whatever bottled beverages he could find with his 'Telekinesis' plasmid. The decade-old bottles were still perfectly sealed, and whilst the labels were quick to dissolve in his hand, the sweet nectar inside looked unspoiled.

"Watcha' doin' here? This is my place!" The hysterical, high-pitched squeal of a female splicer caught Edward off guard, and he dropped his last catch - a rather exquisite bottle of Red Ribbon Brandy. The morbidly disfigured, semi-clad woman had been crouched in the ticket booth, and crept up behind him as he'd greedily started snatching up the goods.

"Listen I'm just after a drink, I'll move on." His voice croaked, it was so rare these days that Edward ever spoke aloud, that his own voice sounded strange to him. It had grown old quickly, hoarse and with a wheeze.

"Yeah champ whatever – you ain't takin nothing from here! It's my place!" She squealed, and jabbed the barrel of a pistol into his chest as she span him around to face her by his shoulder. She glared in insane frustration as Edward smiled, pleased by her mistake. She shouldn't have touched him. With but a thought and mild flex of his shoulder muscles, Edward struck her with 'Electric Flesh', a Gene Tonic he'd stumbled across some years ago in Neptune's Bounty. A blast of power shot up her arm and stunned her just long enough, for him to snap his shotgun closed, and unload a shell into her chest.

The bloody body fell backwards into the ticket booth from where it had come. Edward looked down at her, making sure she wasn't about to get straight back up again. He'd become accustomed to killing, years of necessity had made him quite adept at self-defence, and whilst it was true he had partaken of several ADAM based products, he had so far only used what he had to use, and his restraint from indulging had stopped him ever becoming an addict. The effects had still started to show – he once youthful complexion and clear skin that Sheridan had admired so much, was now riddled with small boils and some slight sagging, and his posture was crooked, his whole body arching slightly to the right.

He wasn't however, too far gone in age and madness, to once in a while stand back and remember who he used to be. The reserved, nervous young valet that had come to Rapture carrying the luggage – that boy wouldn't have harmed anyone or anything, let alone kill someone with intent. He missed being that boy. With a nostalgic grin, he leant down and prized the pistol from the dead splicer's right hand, tucking that too away in his satchel.

He started back towards the Atlantic Express station, taking care not to let his own sloppy steps in the mud give him away either. He recalled that fateful day when the flood had happened – how he and his dear Sheridan had barely made it out – and of course Lady Amelia's screams and gurgling coughs as she had been consumed before their very eyes by the raging waters. It was a horrific memory – over a hundred and fifty had been drowned when that pump failed. Yet Edward found he was wearing a smile – because Sheridan had been there with him, through it all. He was so focused on scavenging and surviving these days that he found little that stirred up such vivid memories of their times together back then.

He reached the station, and he was relieved to find the same carriage he came in on waiting by the platform. The 'Thinker' had been rather glitch and grumpy lately, and when one called for an express carriage, it was anyone guess as to when one might actually be schedule to come and pick you up. The station floor was as deep in slime and mud as the rest of the park, but still Edward could make out bones among it all, and feared stepping on any, with the distinct possibility of them being those of Lady Amelia Fortesque.

With relief he entered the drivers section of the waiting carriage, and dropped his satchel of scavenged goods with a satisfied grunt. He wasn't yet what he'd have described as old, at forty six, but the gruesome distortions to his body from using only the smallest amount of ADAM made life twice as much work.

Ready to make his way back to 'The Drop', he pressed the main button on the drivers console to seal the doors and power up the express. There was a slight purring through the circuits and some power began to turn the gears on the doors, before it all ground to a halt and the power instantly shut off.

Confused, Edward peered out of the carriage. To his horror – the lights everywhere suddenly went out, both in the station and the city lights that shone down through the skylight windows. The gentle churning of the pumps fell silent. Only the sound of rushing, rising water could now be heard in the deep darkness. Blind and terrified, Edward didn't move.

That was the day the 'Thinker' shut down.


	3. Chapter Three

**Ocean floor between Dionysus Park and Siren Alley**

'Thank god the 'Thinker' came back online' Edward repeated over and over in his mind, as he carefully watched where he would drop one of his heavy diving boots next. Through the small window in the diving helmet, he could only make out a few feet in front of him, and barely anything that was directly in front of him. When the 'Thinker' had finally kicked back in, nearly quarter of an hour later, it had seemingly only partially restored all its systems. Therefore, many of the cities bright lights and neon signs hadn't come back on, leaving the seabed outside only partially lit - hindering his progress even further. Of course the 'Atlantic Express' had to be another of the systems that didn't come back on - so Edward had eventually been forced to suit up in one of the airlocks and traverse the tricky outside path to the next nearest airlock, 'Siren Alley' - people had looked blankly at Edward whenever he had still tried to call it the 'Mason's quarter'.

Edward had heard there had been trouble down at Siren Alley from the cacophony of wailing and screeches between splicers, and of course he knew whatever had happened had ended with that old bastard Simon Wales and his wanker of a brother Daniel being killed - no love lost there. He planned to cut through Siren Alley and use the far bridge to get back to 'The Drop', it was the quickest way by foot now the Express was out of commission - god how he missed the Bathysphere's!

Looking up, he could see that some of the larger seacrapers were trying to flicker back to life, with some lights coming back on gradually. He couldn't think of a time the 'Thinker' had ever been completely shut down, so it stood to reason a cold start of all Rapture's automated systems would wreak havoc, especially given how old the cities infrastructure now was and how poorly maintained most of it had been under Sofia Lamb's stewardship. In Andrew Ryan's day, he'd authorized an entire legion of Big Daddy's to oversee Rapture's endless leaks, repairs and construction projects, but Dr Sofia Lamb had seemingly had a real gripe with Big Daddy's, and had slowed their 'production' to an absolute minimum, and as soon as she'd had Gilbert Alexander churn out the first few Big Sister's, she'd forbidden any Big Daddy's being bonded to a little sister. That left a few older models roaming around, doing what little tasks they could manage on their own, but the newer subjects, without a bond to a 'gatherer' were increasingly prone to either going entirely insane, or falling into a catatonic depression. It was rumored that over fifty had simply dropped tools and walked away from Rapture into the dark, endless depths of the Atlantic to die alone and in peace.

After two more trip's on exposed pipes, Edward reached the airlock for 'Siren Alley'. He was relieved, he was starting to sweat profusely in the heavy diving suit and couldn't wait to be rid of it. As he stepped inside though, he realised to his horror, that the adjacent airlock door was also open - the sea continued through the open chamber and into Siren Alley!

"Sweet fuck..." He gasped, as he took a further couple of slow, awkward steps into what had once been Rapture's upper class Mason's quarter, boasting the offices of some of Rapture's best architects, designers and interior decorators. Lately, truthfully it had been apparently doing everything in its power to earn its nickname 'Siren Alley' as Rapture's red light district. If there was one business that remained lucrative in Rapture, it was the business of sex. Eve's Garden had proven too small to meet demand after the civil war, and many had felt it was too 'clinical' and professional. The spliced citizens of the city had lusted for seedy, dark corners and unregulated areas to satisfy their hungers, and with little call for further buildings or expansion, the engineers and designers had abandoned the area, and handed it over to the pimps and addicts.

Now, it was flooded completely, perhaps for a few small air pockets that bounced along the canopied ceiling overhead. Some emergency lighting was still on, bathing the alley in a dull blue glow. There were occasional, erratic red flashes from the emergency beacons indicating where a Securis bulkhead door had slammed shut in a vain effort to contain the waters. Bodies were scattered everywhere, some drifting overhead, others already settling closer to the ground. The number of victims testified to a quick inrush of water, they hadn't had time to try and escape that much was certain.

Edward looked best he could through his helmet window at the overhead canopy - it looked intact, as far as he could tell there was no damage, none that could have flooded Siren Alley so quickly. He felt a stabbing in his gut, one that had been growing for a number of months now - Rapture was starting to fall apart. Dionysus Park had been an accident, or some said intentional, but nonetheless it hadn't been a fault with the structure itself. And if you discounted the considerable damage left over from the Civil war, Rapture had stood up to the elements fairly well for quite a while. But over the last year or two, three of the cities iconic seascrapers had flooded and collapsed, and whilst not flooding entirely like Siren Alley, many buildings were starting to warp, bow and crumble under the pressure of the sea. The number of floods, whilst small in comparison to this, had accelerated this year. Rapture, was starting to drown.

Despite the horrors he had witnessed, lived - and the losses of Sheridan and many friends over the years, Edward still held a torch for the city Rapture used to be, and how much he had fallen in love with its majesty and miracles when he had first arrived in 1946. He pined for the person that Rapture allowed him to become. So to now look upon the site of yet another lost district, he felt a great sadness, and regret that one of mankind's greatest accomplishments was being left to die.

He had always been an avid supporter of Andrew Ryan's philosophy - despite the great man's personal flaws, he had certainly had vision, and a head for making the impossible, possible. Edward still believed, that had Ryan not been forced to break his own principles to combat rats like Fontaine and Lamb, that the Rapture dream would have survived, and prospered! It could have been what everyone had dreamed it could be! Not just a sunken pile of metal beams and failing circuits.

Sheridan would never had stood for this, he'd have fought, as he had back in the war - fought hard for his dreams and those of the city that they had both loved. Perhaps for too long now, Edward had simply survived off the scraps he could find. He felt he was perhaps as guilty as the rest for just standing by as Rapture decayed. As he looked beyond the flooded building, through the canopy at the flickering buildings overhead, Edward realized that soon he would have to make a choice, not just for himself but for any left alive in Rapture that were sane enough to appreciate life. He either had to welcome death with composure and calm, or he had to act now, to rally the city from its deathbed and make one last fight for breath.


	4. Chapter Four

**Paupers Drop**

Years spent in the companionship of perpetual dripping had made Edward oblivious to it these days, but today, it seemed louder than ever before. He sat atop the Fishbowl Diner, his legs dangling over the side, gazing deep in thought through the large oval windows overhead. He could just make out the rooftop of Siren Alley from there, and his mind was still back in those drowned corridors.

"It's true I'm tellin' ya! Lamb was abducted, stolen from us by somebody topside! It had to be the Brit's wanting her back for somethin'..." A young, limping man passed by on the ground, chatting excitedly to a spliced young woman that swaggered drunkenly beside him. "Abducted? Yeah right... nobody knows where the city is idiot! She abandoned the family - left us all down here to rot!" The young woman croaked loudly.

"She never would! We were the chosen ones, worthy!" He argued back, waving his arms above his head dramatically. They continued to argue until they rounded the corner towards Town Square and continued on until out of sight.

So it was really true, Edward thought, for whatever reason, Sofia Lamb really was gone. It burned him that most probably she had escaped to the surface alive, but that was by no means certain - nobody could possibly know who, if anyone, had been in Sinclair's escape pod when Persephone dropped into the abyss. Dr Lamb could well have been crushed, drowned and dragged down to hell. He liked that image a great deal... But either way, the fact of the matter was that the Rapture Family had just had it's manipulative, sadistic head cut off. The spliced, delusional hoards would now be roaming rampant again, betrayed, abandoned and wild with anger.

If it had simply been a handful of splicers left scattered around the city, then Edward would have thought more of a personal escape plan to the surface before the city flooded completely, but he knew enough sane people still that whilst perhaps on the peculiar or eccentric side, didn't deserve to be left to die. But moreover, it was Rapture herself Edward loved deeply, the stunning city that for a time had made his dreams come true. It was to Rapture and the survival of the Rapture dream, that his loyalties were still bound.

"You look lost today boy..." The soft, deep-south voice came gently from behind, and a warm hand came down on Edwards shoulder. Grace Holloway eased her old body down next to him, and she led her cane down. She swung her short legs and swollen feet over the edge and gently began to rock them side to side like a child on a rope swing.

"I've seen a lot lately Grace, a lot to take in." He replied, still looking towards the sea beyond the windows. "I'm sure you've already heard, but I'm sorry all the same - Dr Lamb has cut loose and bolted. Up on the surface now they are saying..."

Grace let her plump face slowly drop and she gazed down at a burning oil drum full of paper. "Oh yes, I heard she's gone, and part of me will mourn for her departure... but at the same time, I'm not sure that I've not had a fortunate escape. That woman blinded me, and filled me with a burnin' hatred that didn't need to be there... she used me." there was a sorrow in her confession. "But if you think about it, whether Lamb stays or goes, it really doesn't make a whole deal of difference anymore. We're all still here, doing what we can to get by.

"But for how much longer..." Edward added. "Siren Alley is gone..." He started. Grace blinked in surprise, "I hadn't heard about that..."

"Yes Siren Alley... the Futuristics building, Persephone... I even heard Fort Frolic, Neptune's bounty and the Medical Pavilion are waist deep these days. The city - she's going under." He sighed, turning to look Grace straight in the eye.

"Well what do you expect me to do about it son? Get mopping Fleet Hall?" Edwards stern but playful glare in return told her there was more to his statement that a mere observation.

"Well Edward, seriously what can be done? Nobodies fixin' nothin' anymore. It's only by the grace of God anything is left standing at all... we all know we are livin' on borrowed time. it's just a waitin' game now..." She trailed off, looking up at the looming ocean held back behind the window panes, waiting silently to rage in and consume them all.

Edward placed a comforting hand onto hers. They hadn't always been friendly - back when Grace had been an avid disciple of Dr Lamb and close friend of Lady Amelia, she had despised Edward and Sheridan, and until only a few weeks ago, had blamed them for Amelia's death in Dionysus Park. However, since her faith in the good doctor had been shaken and Lamb's integrity dropped into dispute, she'd been full of questions and second guessing her entire outlook on the city around her. It had been Grace that found Edward, driven from the ruins of his home in Mercury Suites and squatting in the back room of 'The Artists Struggle'. She'd wanted just to talk, and had allowed him to take shelter under her supervision at the Sinclair Deluxe. Since then, they'd not been close, but they'd been talking quite a lot.

"What if it doesn't have to be. What if there's life in the old girl yet?" His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, gesturing towards the city.

"I assume you're talking about Rapture - because this old girl's barely standing up straight!" Grace cackled, pointing a thumb at herself. "Well... under the right circumstances I think anything can be fixed, but we haven't got a lot going for us down here - anyone capable of working is batshit crazy, buzzed up to the eyeballs on ADAM. No face it Edward, be made this bed - and now we've got to lie in it." She slapped his shoulder gently with conviction, and rose back up onto her feet.

She began to walk away towards one of the rickety bridges built across to another rooftop, before turning back. "Don't you go bringing any more tin daddy's around here though - even to fix a crapper, d'ya hear me? I'm still not too keen on 'em! I may have been harsh on that Delta Daddy, but no amount of exoneration will ever hide that damn smell!"


	5. Chapter Five

**Lighthouse**

Jack stared up at the old structure, and tightened his grip around the large backpack he had slung over one shoulder. The huge statue on the top had clearly seen some ferocious storms, and lost both its wings and the giant orb that had been perched between them. It now resembled more a storm-ravaged Venus de milo. The bricks had lost much of their mortar, and corners had been chipped away by the relentless battering of the sea.

He looked back briefly at the small expeditionary vessel that had brought him out, and smirked slightly at the small group assembled on the bow - the captain and his officers scratching their heads as to the origin and purpose of this phantom lighthouse out in the middle of nowhere. It didn't matter - he had offered a fairly generous bribe in return for their silence, but once that bribe had been spent on a couple of beers with the lads, there was no guarantee this story wouldn't find its way to a few curious ears. Jack didn't really care too much anymore, as technology advanced here on the surface, it would surely only be a matter of time before Rapture became common knowledge through somebody stumbling upon it, or whatever was left of it that was. Whenever that happened, he would simply keep his head down. The crew of the boat had a false name and address, and there was nothing else anywhere to link him to the city or the great Andrew Ryan. The same could be said for his girls, each of whom were already picking up some momentum building their own lives, each intellectual geniuses in their own rights, with one already setting her sights on NASA.

Jack had put Rapture behind him many years ago, and comfortably moved on to create his life raising the girls. It was therefore still astonishing to him, that he now found himself standing back on those same stone steps he had climbed back in 1960 after swimming out of that crashed airliner. Sat by his feet, was his second large sack, that contained his deep sea diving equipment. He looked down upon it, face to face with the mask, with dread. He had no desire to venture back down, to ever lay eyes upon that hellish metropolis again - but neither would his conscience give him any other choice, not since that visit from Tenenbaum the month before.

The large doors were jammed, their hinges eroded and the base of both doors looked as though they had almost melted into the stone slabs beneath as the rust had eaten them away. Fortunately, there was enough of a gab between them for him to slide through sideways, stepping over a mound of deposited grime, seaweed and sediment. It was far from the grand welcome he'd been met with all those years ago - no automatic lights, no gentle music, just eerie darkness and the whistle of the wind outside. Jack reached for his torch and cast a narrow beam out ahead. A huge, shattered mess of metal and crumbled stone blocked the left staircase, where the giant bust of Andrew Ryan had come crashing down. The red banner lay beneath the rubble, sodden and dark brown.

Dragging the bag that contained his diving equipment, Jack followed the right hand side stairs down to the Bathysphere dock. There was no bobbing sphere in the chamber this time, just the empty well with a nasty, dirty layer of mouldy debris floating in it. It was curious to Jack, how standing there in the darkness, that he suddenly felt a slight wave of pity for his father. It had taken a lot of thought and reflection for Jack to finally come around to the fact that Andrew Ryan had been his father, but he had done so eventually. He felt neither pride nor shame about it, as it had only been a genetic link - never the chance for any other sort of influence from Ryan to the man Jack had grown into. But he did know what Rapture had meant to Ryan, and forgetting all else, his father had laid down Rapture with good intentions. How proud Andrew Ryan must have felt passing through that very lighthouse, back in its glory. Jack was so very glad in a way the man could not see the decrepit mound of bricks it was today.

He began to pull on his diving gear - all so much more advanced already than the bulky diving suits he remembered from before. He watched the well in front of him as he prepared, and could almost hear the voices from the past - Cohen, Tenenbaum, Fontaine... Ryan, the taunts lies and bullshit they had all fed him as he had pranced around like a puppet on a string.

With his tanks in place and his satchel attached to his belt, Jack gently, reluctantly, lowered himself over the edge into the Bathysphere well. It was so terrifyingly dark - even with his torch he could only just make out the walls of the well. He swam to what was the 'back' of the well, where he began reaching around for what he hoped to find - the maintenance wire that ran the same route as the entrance Bathysphere - he'd seen it on his way back up in 1960. Finally, he curled his hand around it, and yanked on it twice, heavily. It seemed solid, and he hoped to god it was still connected at the other end. It had been put in place to allow Big Daddies to travel up to the Lighthouse to carry out essential works, and then zip back down it again straight to a small airlock between Hephaestus and Neptune's Bounty.

Jack slung his tether clasp around the cable, and began his descent. It was a slow task, and terrifying. For the first two hours, he saw nothing but the haze of his headlamp shining out into nothing, just the cable heading straight down. It had been a short time after then, when there had been something beneath him that caught his attention. It was so very faint, but it had definitely been a light.

He wasn't sure what to expect - when he had left Rapture eight years ago, it had been fairly beaten up even then after a year of war. Putting the city out of his mind for all those years, he had built up an assumption that with his father dead, the city would have foundered and been lost completely not too long after he left - but Tenenbaum had set him straight. Not only did she know the city was still alive - she had been back. She'd explained the psychotic Dr Sofia Lamb, and how her abduction of little girls to create more gatherer's had persuaded Tenenbaum to go back down and put a stop to it. If she was to be believed, a fair amount of the city still stood, and as a testament to his fathers will and the ingenuity of his engineers, much of the automated systems that kept the pumps churning and the lights burning were still running, with very little care being taken of them.

The light blinked again - and a second time. It grew clearer as it grew closer, and as it did, more and more distant, faint lights began to appear from the deep. At first they appeared like a school of little fish, until he grew deep enough to start making out the buildings that they belonged too. The tall structures turned from dark, distant objects, to the astonishing, art-deco seascrapers he remembered! True the city was much darker than before, it looked ill... but it still didn't fail to take his breath away. "My god... I'm back..." he whispered to himself, as if trying to convince himself of the fact. The many years had almost made his time in the city feel like a dream, but here she was again - Rapture, oh so very real indeed.


	6. Chapter Six

**Hephaestus**

It was perhaps now, one of the grimmest, most depressing places in the entire city. When Dr Sofia Lamb had vanished, the heir achy and control over the Rapture family had quickly broken down, and those tasked with monitoring Hephaestus had seized the opportunity to free themselves of such an undesirable posting. Hephaestus had been infamous for random explosions, electrocutions and agonizing death by scalding ever since it was built atop its volcanic vent, but since it had been sabotaged back in 1960 and all but abandoned by anyone trained to oversee it, it had become a real deathtrap.

Of course, Dr Lamb hadn't wished to have her efforts to rule Rapture cut short by a loss of power, so she had kept a team constantly on watch down in the core, to see that the power kept flowing. It had been now nearly a week since Dr Lamb had left, and it was evident the Rapture family lost no time in clearing out within a few hours.

Edward quietly explored, navigating scorched hallways, exposed and broken electrical cables, collapsed gears and boiling jets of steam from broken pipes. The entire facility reeked of oil and metal, and the horrific sounds of sheering metal and struggling engines hurt the ears. As well as at least five dead ones, Edward did pass two or three living Big Daddies - groaning still as they trudged along the many walkways surrounding the turning core. They were perhaps the understated saviors responsible for the little power the city was still being fed.

Edward had not once been technically minded, and despite all his exploring, the one place he could make neither head nor tail of, was Hephaestus. He had never been able to explore it before now, with Lamb's goons constantly on patrol, but now inside, all he could see were thousands of pipes snaking off in all directions, massive monitoring stations with hundreds of dials and gauges, none of which gave any indication as to what it was they were displaying. He took a moment to pause, and watch the multi-story core gently rotate, entirely clueless as to what a single part of it did. Already, on his first mission to try and begin some sort of reconnaissance of how far gone the cities systems were, he felt massively disheartened. Even when he had come to Rapture, he had been a simple, ignorant boy riding on the coat tails of a truly brilliant, educated man - and he had never felt as close as he did now to being that terrified boy again.

He turned from the core, and for the sake of simply giving himself some credit, followed a route he did know - the route to Andrew Ryan's office. He and Sheridan had been summoned there a number of times together when their business empire had been at its height, and during the time they and Sinclair had been agreeing on the terms of Persephone's construction.

He reached Ryan's office entrance. Someone had managed to smash the large glass wall that overlooked the lobby, and a withered, skeletal corpse hung in it's place, strung up by the wrists. It wore a filthy, beige suit, and a sign had been hung around its neck - "Tyrant". Edward looked upon the body with disgust - it was surely the body of Andrew Ryan - the suit gave it away if nothing else. "Sorry old chap - whatever you were, you didn't deserve this." Edward muttered.

He followed the corner, through into the main office. It was just as large and sparse as he remembered, but littered with scattered papers from draws pulled from the desk. He took a stunned step back and nearly shrieked, as in the dark corner, he made out a morbid scene. On top of Ryan's desk, were two decomposing bodies in a position of having intercourse. The woman was sprawled across the desk on her back, naked from the waist down, and the man had been stood over her between her legs. The unsuspecting couple, perhaps enjoying the thrill of desecrating Ryan's altar, had been caught unawares from behind by an unknown assailant. They'd both been run through with the same long stretch of copper pipe, pinning them forever to the desk beneath them. Dark, congealed blood stains ran across the mahogany top and down onto the floor.

Screwing his face up and looking away, Edward was enticed by the small chamber beyond the office. It had always been gated during their visits, but the way was now clear. The floor just outside it was very worn and relatively clean, suggesting at least one or two of Dr Lamb's 'family' had been regularly on guard there. Wondering through, Edward found he was quite disappointed by what he found - a large console, seemingly built in the shape of the cities silhouette for effect, that instead resembled a church organ more than anything - ironic. The whole machine looked very bland and not particularly of much importance. He got close, and began to study the wire that were connected to different sockets, again none of which made any sense to him. He ran a hand across the centre of the console, wiping away a considerable layer of dust, until he came to some sort of access point, a large slot out which stuck a large Genetic Key. He'd seen a few of them, mainly held by members of the long defunct Rapture Central Council, granting them access to certain systems throughout Rapture. It too was coated in dust, not having been touched for years. It seemed strange to Edward that Lamb would have dedicated any man power to something that on first impressions appeared so obsolete.

Yet, the more Edward gazed upon it all, the more he realized that to be the only machine in Andrew Ryan's office, this really did have to bare some importance. The machine was lifeless, quiet. Whatever the key was for, it certainly wasn't doing it at the moment, so Edward got a firm grip around the key, and began to pull. Years of neglect had let the key settle quite soundly into the slot, and it took all of Edwards body weight applied to it before it finally slid out. The motion of the key being removed activated a whirring sound within the large machine, and a blinking light beside the key slot suddenly began to flash. It was if it was asking for the key back, throwing a little tantrum like an infant deprived of its bottle. Clueless to any of it, Edward curiously looked the key once over, before returning it to the slot, and pushing it in all the way again until there was a noticeable 'clunk'.

"Recognised: Ryan - Andrew. Welcome back... Re-booting..." a monotone, electrical voice suddenly chirped up. Suddenly, frightening Edward into leaping a few steps back, the machine lit up like a Christmas tree, a number of its wires blowing out of their sockets and pouring sparks down like rain.

"Rebooting... confirming established link to Hephaestus Core... confirming established link to Arcadia... confirming... confirming..." The voice trailed off and went quiet for a moment. "Link to 'Minerva's Den' cannot be confirmed... 'The Thinker' Rapture Central Computer unresponsive to link request..."

As Edward gazed upon the machine, as unimpressive as it was, he realized this had to have been Andrew Ryan's direct access point to all of the cities major systems - and that key had been his! With that Key, Edward could potentially access and control any system in Rapture! He suddenly felt a chill and went cold as he realised that he may at last have found something that could pave his way forward - could he get away with this? Could it be as easy as this to start making a difference in the fate of the city? If so... where would he start? He still knew nothing about how a city worked - let alone one so heavily dependent on automation as Rapture.

That beautiful machine suddenly gave him his answer. "...'The Thinker' Rapture Central Computer unresponsive to link request..."


	7. Chapter Seven

**Fort Frolic**

In many ways, Jack's sorrow for Rapture was growing, a stiffling tension was growing in his chest the further he walked. Despite the relentless attempts to kill him whilst he had been there, Jack had always remembered Fort Frolic was quite the beautiful venue, and had wished he'd been able to visit in its heyday - what fun there would surely have been to have had! But as with many of the tunnels and corridors he'd already walked, Fort Frolic was waist deep in freezing water, and all of it's overt neon signs had gone out. The sound of running water, the bold stone architecture and dim light made the chasm feel more like a cave - in fact his entire journey into Rapture this time had felt more as though he was cave-diving through a network of submerged chambers, than visiting a once great city.

The leak overhead, the one that had been there even before his first unfortunate visit to Fort Frolic, still rained down from the crack in the glass canopy and onto the central staircase that fed up to Fleet Hall. At the top, lay the corpse of a Big Daddy - at least the diving suit of one - he couldn't tell how much of the its biological remains still lay that rusting shell. After a decade back topside living in relative comfort, and a daily routine working in a bank that rarely stretched his physical boundaries beyond lifting a deposit box, Jack couldn't fathom how he had come to battle those giant creatures, and won! He guessed adrenaline would account for it - mixed clumsily with perhaps a little too much ADAM - and of course, he couldn't stand by and leave the little girls how he'd found them...

And there it was of course - his reason for coming back. When he'd escaped all those years ago, and take those four little sisters away with him - he'd known he'd left many more behind, but had taken some measure of comfort in knowing Dr Tenenbaum had been there to watch out for them. At least, that had been how he'd managed to get to sleep every night.

As his eyes glazed over and he remembered, he waded out of the water and climbed the stairs, that creaked and groaned under the first weight they'd had to support in quite a while.

He'd nearly screamed out of shock that summers morning when he had opened the door to Dr Brigid Tenenbaum. How different she had looked in a clean, fresh louse and skirt, with her silver hair neatly swept back with a large bronze clip. He'd never found out who the distant, coloured man had been waiting for her out in her car, with the dark glasses and what looked like strange mutilations - maybe burns over his face - but he'd seemed particularly wary of Jack and protective of Tenenbaum. She had to wave him down and offer a nod of assurance before leaving his sight and accepting Jack's invitation into his modest home.

Jack froze suddenly at the top of the stairs, and quickly slid behind one of the archway pillars just outside Fleet Hall. He'd heard a wet, sloppy trudge somewhere up ahead - footsteps. He'd heard faint whispers and voices already, from distant rooms and down long corridors, but he was yet to come across anyone face to face, and the possibility of it now already had his heart racing. He pulled the pistol from his pocket and held it up on guard, ready.

What came from around that corner however, wasn't anything Jack had seen before. In the shadows art first it appeared a monster - tall, lanky and awkward, it's every movement a mechanical jolt. It was limping and leaning bent to the left, and was dragging something. The closer it grew, Jack could hear a distinct clank of metal with each of those sodden footsteps.

"She left us... left us alone..." a weak, whimpering voice came from the dark creature, female, young and pitiful. It staggered into the light, and Jack gasped in horror at the teenage girl, encased in a suit of dark fabric and a cage-like structure, that appeared to be fixed to all her main joints. Only her head was exposed, a pale, gaunt face that peered up and over the ring where a helmet had once fitted. Her eyes were sunken and tired, and her hair oily, flat and stuck to her sweating forehead. She looked straight at Jack, but neither did she seem to see him at all. "She left us... They both..left us..."

Jack began to lower the gun, and looked up at the spider-like figure with pity. It was a Big Sister - just as Tenenbaum had described. But this one was hardly ferocious or violent - she seemed distraught, emotionally broken. She also bore several, serious wounds - burns to her arms and legs, and a gaping, oozing wound exposed a number of ribs. In her right hand, she clased the collar of the body she was dragging, a dead splicer. It had been an old man, his facial features morphed and churned beyond recognition, and both his right arm and leg almost twice the length of those on his left side. He was covered in blood, and still clung to a shotgun with his right hand. Jack figured out he had just missed a showdown between the two, and at some point before his demise the splicer had got off a shot at the Big Sister at close range.

Tenenbaum had told Jack all about these Big Sisters, but not how to communicate with one or even approach one without being killed. That was going to have be something he figured out soon if he was to complete the mission he had set himself. He watched on, grief stricken, as the poor girl staggered on down the stairs, passing through the cascade of sea water without a flinch, still mumbling to herself in distress. "Our mother...and Eleanor... gone! What did we do wrong..."

"Excuse me..." He coughed up reluctantly at last, tightening his grip on the pistol that he held behind his back. The Big Sister didn't respond.

"Excuse me, young lady... may I speak to you?" He gently called out, desperate to conceal the nervousness in his voice. She came to a slow stand still, and let go of the corpse that fell to the floor with a moist thud. She seemed to be listening, but didn't yet turn to face him.

Jack cleared his throat - he had her attention he assumed. He now had to navigate a route of communication that wouldn't set off a tantrum in the girl. He hadn't seen a Big Sister in action, but from what he'd been told, he didn't want to either.

"May I ask your name? Are you alright?" He held out his empty hand as a gentle, calming gesture, though she couldn't yet see it. The Big Sister twitched, and her back arched slightly, a number of her vertebrae made a gruesome cracking sound as it did. "My name?" She called out, sadness in her voice as she thought. "My name..." She repeated, gently turning her head and top of her body to catch sight of Jack standing behind her. Her eyes were more alive now, wide with awareness as she thought over his question. "Big Sister... That is my name, I am Big Sister..."

Jack nodded slowly, and took a step closer. "Big Sister... a Big Sister to the Little Sisters..." She continued, her frightened eyes turning away, staring into oblivion.

"You look after the Little Sisters very well I hear!" Jack assured her, hating how forced the compassion in his voice sounded, even to himself. She snapped her neck back around to face him. "You will not touch them! I won't let you go near the little ones!" She growled in a sudden rage.

Jack flipped his hand back and up to show surrender. "I don't want to touch the little ones, Big Sister..." He tried to spread a smile across his face, but his shaking made his face fight back.

"Keep away from them! Keep away!" She screamed in an explosion of emotion, and spread out her arms and legs wide, before leaping up over ten feet into the air. Jack screamed in shock at her sudden speed and agility, and fell back to the floor as she came sailing down through the air and landed like a pincer above him, holding him down. Her eyes burned with hatred, with anger and betrayal, her whole body shook with the rage. Her mouth opened wide, so far that her jaw seemed to entirely dislodge, and she screamed at such a pitch that Jack's ears stung and his head was pierced with pain. She lept again, up into the air, and before Jack could scramble to his knee's to follow her, she was gone.

His heart pounding in his chest and his breathing erratic, Jack took a moment to take in his first meeting with a Big Sister - perhaps he had known her before as a Little Sister, he couldn't tell.

"My God... what have you become...?" He mournfully whispered to the darkness.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Minerva's Den**

Edward lay panting on the marble floor, coughing violently and wiping the salty water from his eyes. He fought to try and see clearly, but with his sight temporarily a blur, he could only hear the Securis Door buckling and hissing above him. He'd known using that tunnel had been a risk - but he'd had a spider splicer on his tail since the Express Depot, and hadn't fancied his chances of surviving as long as it would have taken him to suit up and make it to an airlock. That corridor had been the last pressurized, easy way into Minerva's Den. The main entrance had recently been blown up in some fued involving that moron Reed Wahl. Edward had only met him a few times in the past, and all of them fleeting with only a few pleasantries exchanged, but Charles Porter had repeatedly expressed mounting concerns about the man during Rapture's last few prosperous years before the civil war - about his hunger for power and paranoia. Charles had worried that Wahl's power-craze would push Andrew Ryan to seize control over the 'Thinker' for the good of the city.

Edward sat up, and slapped his hands down to the floor either side of himself to brace whilst he spat out the taste of saltwater. He was grateful the corridor had at least given him a head start before imploding, and that it had taken that damned splicer with it when it flooded. He just hoped that he could find a suit in good enough condition here in Minerva's Den to be able to leave again. He began to shiver, and quickly scurried along the corridor until he found a heating vent and sat up against it. The air flowing from it was the warmest Edward had felt for a while - its seemed whilst mad, Reed Wahl's love for his machine had meant he'd put in the effort to keep the Den's systems running as best he could.

"Ohhhh... a new face around here!" A hunched, older woman was peering around a doorway up ahead. She was dirty and wild-eyed, but she didn't seem particularly spliced up. "You better not be scrounging! Or I'll feed you a couple of bullets!" She scarpered off and could be heard rummaging through draws and cupboards in a frenzy.

"I'm not looking for anything you can calm down - I'm just passing through!" Edward called after her with a little attitude. A shot suddenly rang out, and a plume of dust and splinters blew out of the wall just in front of his face. The woman stood in the doorway, tightly grasping a hand gun that she was clearly not used to handling. "Don't give me that! You don't 'pass through' Minerva's Den, it's the end of the line, out on a limb!" She crowed. She wore a labcoat that may once have been white, and an ID tag hung loosely from her top pocket - " _Dr Lydia Wells - Senior Programmer"._

"You're English?" Edward asked, noting her accent that was nearly as strong as his own. "Where are you from? I haven't seen you before - which given the dwindling numbers we have for sane company these days is quite a rare thing..." She glared at him with caution.

"I'd never leave Minerva's Den!" She shrieked in horror at the very mention, "One doesn't simply leave 'The Thinker' unattended to fend for himself! I am one of the last chosen few that can care for him... I haven't left Minerva's Den in over ten years! I have no need for primitive social interaction when I can speak with 'The Thinker'!" Edward was stunned by her declaration of a ten year confinement, but was starting to think he may have found a way to what he was looking for.

"It's 'The Thinker' that I'm here to find, I need to find me way there if you will help me?"

"What?" She screamed again, tensing so much that she compressed the trigger of her gun and blew a second hole in the floor. "If Reed was still alive, he'd have had you shot just for asking!" She looked around in fear of being overheard - by whom Edward could not think, but at least he now knew that Reed Wahl was thankfully out of the picture! He hadn't wanted to face that fruit loop alone. But he hoped, that this fruit loop in front of him now may not have fried too many of her own circuits just yet to be without use to him.

"There is a problem with the computer Dr Wells, and I just want to try and fix that problem." He explained, his hands held out wide, his tone soothing.

"A problem? Impossible!" She denied it emphatically without even the capacity to comprehend an issue with the super computer. "Everything here is online, all systems are working..."

"All systems here maybe, yes, but Rapture Central Control can't communicate with 'The Thinker' - not since that huge shut down a few weeks ago! Half of Rapture's systems went offline after that, and the others are starting to fail too..." He explained. Her face was reluctant to listen, but he could tell there was a temptation to hear more in her face. "You wouldn't have noticed if you've not left the Den, but The Thinker isn't running the city like its should be..."

"Well..." she growled, not wanting to give in to her curiosity. Edward could tell he'd struck a nerve about something with Dr Wells. "...who cares if Rapture looses a few light bulbs here and there - as long as Minerva's Den is up and running, I'm in no danger!" She spat.

"But neither can you leave - if The Thinker looses control of Hephaestus, it will shut down. If Hephaestus shuts down, Rapture goes dark. If that happens, it will be flooded and lost within a few days. Then Dr Well's, tell me where you will get your oxygen without Arcadia? Your food and fresh water?" He spelled the forecast breakdown out for her, raising a finger for each stage. "You may not like it dear... but you, and The Thinker, need Rapture just as much as Rapture needs the Thinker." Edward was particularly proud of how he'd pulled that little drama out of his head, it had played out well as he could tell Dr Wells was computing it all in her mind.

She swung her jaw from left to right and chewed as though she had a mouthful of tobacco. "Of fuck it..." she cursed, finally. "You'll have to come with me... The Thinker will be able to tell if your little story carries any weight... but I warn you, I will kill you the moment you step anywhere near that computer!"

Edward smiled slightly, and nodded. "Dutifully noted." As she turned and began to head towards a large doorway ahead, Edward slid a hand down to his pocket, and gently curled his fingers around Andrew Ryan's genetic key.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Minerva's Den - Rapture Central Computing**

"This area is off limits! Off limits I say! You don't look at all like a thinking man - get out at once!"

"Oh leave off Boris - scurry back to your little corner go on!" Dr Wells cackled as she let off a couple of shots towards the scrawny little Russian man that had tried to hurl a load of abuse as her and Edward as they had entered the 'Operations' wing of Rapture Central Computing. He spat, and then ran off through a side door.

Dr Wells twitched and giggled to herself as she proceeded forward. "Little pervert sits in his dingy corner and watches old security recordings from EVE's Garden and Cupids Arrow... nearly went nuts when Ryan sent the latter to the bottom of the sea..." As the pair had ventured together through Minerva's Den, the Doctor, although clearly eccentric and having spent a few too many years in her own company, had seemed to relax slightly towards Edward, but still clearly didn't trust him.

"I need to know what it is you want from The Thinker - you are clearly not a computer-literate man, as poor Boris correctly identified. So what is it you think you can do?" She asked, leading them both up a large flight of stairs at the far end of the room, passing a number of bloody corpses on the way. "What has been going on here? These bodies... they couldn't have died more than a few weeks ago?" Edward stopped to stare at a woman in an ugly, beige sweater led face down in a pool of congealed blood, a large spear through her back.

"Yes, yes they all died recently - one big hullabaloo... now tell me, what do you intend to try...?" She pressed, stopping in her tracks.

Edward did wonder how he intended to proceed. He had set out from Hephaestus simply to get The Thinker hooked back up to Raptures mainframe - but the more he'd been passing Andrew Ryan's genetic key through his fingers, the more he'd begun to ponder... would he stop at simply saving the city from drowning? Regardless of his own ambitions, the city wouldn't survive on automation alone - be definition it needed contributing inhabitants and a structured economy... He caught her still staring him down and broke from his thoughts.

"Well you say you are one of the few that can work directly on the main computer systems - why can't you reconnect the link to Rapture Central Control? I would have to do nothing technically... I came here expecting to find the place deserted, or at the very most a rogue splicer or two, and that I'd have to figure something out myself. But you seem like a lady with all her cogs turning?" He played on her instability and hoped a little flattery may help him on his way. There was a glimmer of a smile, but her twitching face soon put a stop to it, and she began to frown.

"I can work on it... but access to The Thinker's systems can only be granted by authorized personnel, via Administrator's Card or Genetic Key. Only three men in Rapture ever held authorization. Charles Milton Porter, Reed Wahl, and of course Andrew Ryan. Without one of these three men, we can do nothing of use..." Edward felt a twinge of hope, and smiled. "If we can access the Thinker, we can grant access to whoever we see fit?" He asked. "Yes of course..." Dr Wells trailed off. The pair carried on through the door at the top of the stairs, passing signs directing them to the 'Core Access'.

The long steel catwalk ahead of them was littered with even more bodies, each as 'fresh' as those back in the operations lobby. Edward had worked out that whatever had caused such carnage, had happened at the same time that The Thinker had shut down completely - someone had broken in here and murdered these splicers, murdered Reed Wahl and for whatever reason, temporarily disabled the massive computer - placing the entire city at risk in the process. Those few minutes without the Thinker had done nearly as much damage as Atlas's New Years Eve attacks back in 1959.

"If you help me fix this Dr Wells... I think I can make you head programmer..." Edward took the bull by the horns and said it. He wasn't entirely sure he knew what he was doing, or if he really could deliver - but he needed this nutty professor on his team. She followed beside him silently for a while, right up until they reached the end of the catwalk and passed through the end door.

They stopped together by the final door, and Dr Wells looked Edward calmly in the eyes. "First, we talk to him. I still want to see if he agrees with you, that Rapture will soon fail as you suggest, and that the implications for Minerva's Den would be equally as catastrophic. If he agree's, then it looks to me like we'll have some serious talking to do... Mr?"

"Edward Carson... pleasure to _finally_ meet in a civilised fashion." He chuckled, shaking her grimy, boney hand. In a subconcious gesture, the Lydia Wells slipped the gun she'd been clinging to into her lab coat pocket, and then opened the doors to 'The Thinker's chamber.

"Fucking hell!" Edward exclaimed as for the first time, he saw the giant machine. It was gargantuan - ten times larger than he had expected, a very intimidating structure. He could finally understand why Porter had always spoken with such pride over that machine - whenever they'd been discussing its integration into his and Sheridan's Bathysphere network. It was built into three main cylinders, the central, larger cylinder having two glowing green 'eyes' at the top, and the two cylinders either side sparked a fizzled with exposed flares of electrical energy.

Dr Well's walked straight past Edward and right up to the machine's main control station at its base. "Yes, he is certainly very handsome..." She looked up at the machine with the eyes of a star-crossed lover, and reached a hand into the air, as if trying to caress it.

The room suddenly began to tremble, and a deep, booming voice called out from every corner. "He is correct Lydia... I cannot link with the cities central control systems." Edward span around, looking to every level and corner of the room, looking for someone somewhere with a microphone, but quickly realized... this was the computer speaking, this was the electrical mind of the 'The Thinker'.

"I have been monitoring all conversation since you entered Minerva's Den, Edward Carson." The machine continued, "You are correct to anticipate destruction. Without 'The Thinker' all city systems will be offline in two months, one week, three days, four hours, twenty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds... Without Rapture city systems, all Minerva's Den systems will fail in two months, three weeks, five days, two hours, thirty-six minutes and eighteen seconds...

Dr Wells dropped her head into her hands, and began to quietly weep. "How can I work with you? I cannot access your system..." She cried aloud, at the machine. It didn't answer.

"Yes we can. But I'll need your word Dr Wells, that you will work with me to restore what I need restored. In return, I will grant you unlimited access to The Thinker and all systems. You can pick up where Wahl and Porter left off..." Edward hoped to hell that this would play out how he thought it would... He pulled Andrew Ryan's genetic key from his pocket, and held it out.

"What? what is that?" Dr Wells looked at the key as if it were a newborn child, and put on a smile that was a thousand times more terrifying as any frown she'd thrown at Edward yet, but her delight gave Edward the confidence he needed, to hand it to her. She ran across the room and up a staircase that led to the upper level, and vanished into a small glass-fronted booth. Edward chased after her as fast as his legs would carry him, and arrived in the doorway just in time to see her slide the key into a large control console. The giant tin can above them both began to whir and clunk, and the electrical blasts from its two dynamo's seemed to grow much stronger and faster.

"Welcome, Ryan - Andrew. Administrator Access granted." Edward felt the first tingle of excitement he'd had in over a decade, perhaps even a thought of hope for the future - if he dared go as far as that.

"Let's get to work on this city..." He smiled at Dr Wells, then looked up at his new, mechanical best friend. "On _our_ city..."


	10. Chapter Ten

**High Street**

This was new to Jack - he'd never seen the High Street or Market Street, instead having only really seen the fleeting few parts of the city that were necessary to his escape last time. High Street was far larger and more open than most of the areas he had seen before, and it felt more like a submarine cathedral, solemn, dark and cold. The enormous windows that overlooked the cityscape were coated in slime and ran with seawater, which was seeping through the seams, making the whole view shimmer. The street's size made even the smallest sound echo throughout, and the churning of flooding levels beneath the balcony beside COHEN's provided a constant, background sound of gushing water. A Big Daddy stood on the uppermost level, looking down through his glowing yellow 'eye's for a sign - any sign at all, of a little sister.

Jack shuffled his feet through the rubble and litter, and having now explored deeper into the city center than before, found himself at a loss where to head next. Whilst he was pleased to have found the lunatic Sofia Lamb gone, Jack realized that without a figurehead of any description leading the city, there was absolutely no hierarchy left to aid him in rolling out his plan - or rather the plan he'd been entrusted with by Tenenbaum.

Suddenly, every single bulb and neon tube in the huge hall erupted to life, dozens surging and exploding with the sudden flow of fresh power proving too much for their deteriorated circuits. Everywhere was instantly flooded with light, and the floor began to tremble as the generators, heaters and pumps began to fight for life again, their veins pulsing with Rapture's restored lifeblood once more. Jack turned on the spot, his gaze up high and his jaw dropped as the once-luxurious retail outlet came back to life - even the hidden speakers crackled and coughed before starting to warily play Johnny Ray' "Just walking in the rain". Even two large fountains began to splutter out dirty streams of stagnant sludge before feeding through some fresh water again.

"Main power is back up!" A shriek came from a concealed splicer somewhere up in one of the small shops on the second level, "Salvation! Salvation!" Wailed another, insane. A few more lights sparked and blew, but the power seemed to be stabilizing, and through the dirt on the glass, Jack could make out a fair few more lights coming back on in the distance - even two rotating spotlights beamed back up against the Athena's Glory building.

This was the boldest sign of life Jack had yet experienced, and in his gut he felt a swelling of hope. Someone had to have restored the power, and it was reasonable to assume that to do so, they'd have to still have at least some of their marbles left! Jacks first move then, was to make his way back to Hephaestus - from what he'd learned all those years back, that was Rapture's primary power source using the massive geothermal fissure in the bedrock. He hoped to find this mystery somebody there, until the speakers broke off the music and a female voice played an automated announcement.

" _We apologise to the Citizens of Rapture for the temporary disruption to power and city systems. The Thinker is back online and working harder than ever to keep you, and the city, running on time!_ "

"Temporary? Who you fuckin' kidding darlin'? Weeks in the dark crawlin' around on our asses!" An irish splicer laughed out loud as he hung from the ceiling, his hands clasped around two fish hooks buried into the stone. Giggling, he soon scurried off - his way to cause more mayhem now clearly lit.

Jack paused then - he did recall Dr Tenenbaum mentioning something about a 'Thinker' - he couldn't really recall what it had been that she'd said, only that it had been damaged just before she left the city - weeks ago. Well, the time scale matched her account and that of the rather vocal splicer overhead - perhaps the issues that had been plaguing the city lately were down to this 'Thinker' rather than Hephaestus? A Power _routing_ issue rather than a _supply_ issue maybe?

Pulling his heavy satchel back up onto his shoulder, Jack started searching for a way to keep moving forward. He passed the 'Information' Desk, and had started to turn a corner when he caught sight of an overturned machine - a strikingly familiar one... a Gatherer's Garden. This machine too was flickering again with restored power, and playing its little jingle " _In the garden we are growin', many changes will be flowin', if you want to be amazin', see the flowers we are raisin'!_ "

Jack's blood supply of ADAM had long since petered out, and he'd used his very last buzz of Electrobolt to jump start his car on a frozen winters morning back in 1962. That first time he'd taken a dose had been horrific, but the thought crossing his mind now to top himself up once more was less terrifying given he knew the advantages some Plasmids would offer on his journey to find this mystery person and carry out his plan regarding the little sisters still left down here. The need for some defensive Plasmids was even more justified by his most recent decision, that he would do his best to help even the Big Sisters if he could.

Assuring himself that he wouldn't over-indulge, Jack kicked open the front of the machine, and reached in for an EVE Hypo. "Hair of the dog that bit me..." he sighed as he jabbed the needle in deep.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Minerva's Den - Rapture Central Computing - Operations**

Edward gazed out of the window with pride, ecstatic with his first sense of real accomplishment since he could remember. He watched as more and more lights came on, after an hour he even saw a few Atlantic Express Carriages slide along a track in their automatic re-set pattern, heading back to the Depot. He was gleaming, trembling despite the warmth flowing from the air ducts in renewed abundance.

He could image...no, he _knew_ how proud Sheridan would have been of him, had he been here to see this. His partner had always prioritized Edward's development, learning and helping him make larger and larger accomplishments of his own - well restarting the automated systems of an entire city wasn't too shabby. Rapture finally resembled its old self again, at least in part - and Edward could feel the same pride from that very first day when he and Sheridan had looked upon Rapture from their penthouse and begun dreaming of all the possibilities it offered. He felt alive again, he felt almost as though Sheridan was alive again - the spirit of hopeful endeavor, ambition! Precisely what had been going through the mind of Andrew Ryan when he'd built the old girl in the first place.

Dr Well's sat just behind him in an old arm chair, that was perched awkwardly on a pile of technical readouts from a nearby computing station. "Well you've got the city and the Den chatting again - now whats your plan?" She wearily asked, a pessimistic tone to her voice still that Rapture itself was worth much effort. To her, everything was about keeping the Thinker thinking. ' _Eccentric old bitch'_ Edward thought to himself.

He didn't have a detailed plan, not yet. But he did have a goal - to keep this feeling of drive and ambition for as long as he could, in honor of his beloved Sheridan, and everyone that had once lived and worked to make Rapture what it had once been - his home, his beloved city that had made him happier than anywhere else on earth.

"We have the automation running mostly now, that's a huge step Dr Wells..." He began, rubbing his chin and thinking quietly whilst watching the waving seaweed a few feet outside the window. "I'm no Andrew Ryan - I'm no engineer, but one thing I was taught down here was how to make a buck. Rapture ran on bucks - big bucks. Bucks meant security, comfort and good living for the populace..." he spoke aloud as he let his mind unravel.

"Not much of a populace left friend..." Dr Wells murmured as she looked at the floor between her feet and span the pistol in her hand. She did have a point though, and Edward was pleased. "Indeed... that seems be where any grand scheme will have to begin, uniting the cities population - that is how Lamb kept it ticking over for so long. Once we establish some sort of organised society, we can start to rebuild properly... get an economy going! Open up a bank, shops - getting Neptune's Bounty back into operation will have to be a priority before the city starves..." Edward was racing far ahead of himself, but he was too excited to stop thinking of it all, thinking big!

"Hold your horses there, you'll never even get started. You'll never get the splicers in line on your own you idiot!" She spat, laughing at him.

"Oh I'll find a way! I'm damned if I won't find a way... I'll use The Thinker somehow, shut down systems of our choosing or shut off oxygen to parts of the city so that we can heard them somewhere all together..." His eyes were wide and his hands fidgeting anxiously as he tried to conjur up all manner of schemes.

"Oh on you won't!" bellowed Dr Wells. She threw her weight up out of her seat and stormed over to his side. "The Thinker is not a bargaining chip! And it is certainly not your personal toy! If you start shutting random shit off and pissing the splicers off, they'll tear Minerva's Den apart looking for you and the machine!" In a rage she held the pistol up to his face. "I won't let you risk the Den, me! The Thinker!" She began to cry and the hand holding the gun trembled.

Dr Wells was too spliced herself to know it, but Edward had counted how many bullets she had unloaded warding off her co-workers as they'd fought through to the core, and she was fresh out of rounds. Confidently, he made a display just for her by turning away without a flinch. "I admit I am no army, Dr Wells. But I will need The Thinker to bring my city into line..."

" _Your_ city?" She asked in a hushed whisper. He gave no answer, deep in thought and oblivious to his slip of the tongue.

"We'll need an initial defense against retaliations, you are right. Protection from Splicer attacks. We need Big Daddies, and Big Sisters!" The idea struck him like lightening! With a Big Daddy or Sister at every doorway, he could turn the Den into a veritable fortress in an instant!

Dr Wells looked back to him and lowered the gun as her mind too began to go into overdrive, "Back in the early days, when the Big Daddies were exclusively designed for maintenance work around the city, their rosters and assignments were all transmitted by The Thinker directly to each of them by radio. They were all fitted with R-34 receiving units, which were wired into their suits. Even though the primary function of the Big Daddies shifted to Gatherer protection, we still fitted the R-34's so that Big Daddies could still be used when required for routine maintenance projects outside! Even the Big Sisters have them!" Dr Wells was almost as excited as Edward by this point, they gleamed at each other and were almost bouncing on the spot as she churned out her brainwave.

"You're telling me we can just call them with instructions to guard Minerva's Den?" Edward squealed with delight!

"Well... almost. Violence was never something we were asked to instigate - I believe the Big Daddies only use Violence to protect Little Sisters..."

Edward nodded in understanding, "And it was only on direct instruction from Sofia Lamb that would set off a Big Sister... they just seem to roam around mindlessly now." It was a set back, but Edward was not about to be deterred now - he had the potential of The Thinker in his grasp, and was not about to waste it.

"Well just the sight of one of those beasts is usually enough to deter most splicers... if the fuckers do come running, they'll scarper as soon as they catch sight of a Big Daddy in the way. If they don't, then they are sure to piss them off enough to instigate an attack anyway..." He wasn't sure he believed the plan was foolproof, but it was the best he could come up with.

"It's risky to assume any of that... I'm still not prepared to risk anything just for your plans to take over the city" Dr Wells grunted, thinking. Edward stuttered slightly and stepped back, "I'm not taking over the city you stupid woman... I'm simply trying to save it!" He demanded.

"Yeah...ok if you say so..." She sarcastically replied, folding her arms.

"You need this to work as much as I do Doctor - is this small risk not worth ensuring a stable future for your great machine? For yourself? After all your years of devoted dedication and effort, are you not entitled to see it rise from the ashes and be all it can be? You will be the Thinkers guardian, its _mother!_ " Edward heard something familiar in his voice, and repeated what he'd just said back in his head, but this time in Andrew Ryan's voice - it worked very well. He was ecstatic to think that he could deliver a line and a vision just as that Great man could have done once upon a time.

Dr Wells returned to her arm chair and let out a long breath, looking back down to the floor as she comprehended the situation, and the proposal.

"I'll help you build your legion of Big Sisters, but there won't be too many around these days. If this works, I get free rule over the Den, that's my condition. This will be mine to run as I wish. If this goes wrong - I'm sealing off the Den for good whether you are in it or not, understand?" She pointed at Edward with the barrel of the gun and closed one eye as the other mockingly took aim at his head, indicating the sincerity behind her threat to throw him to the dogs if left with no other choice.

Edward smiled again, and winked at her, hoping his frivolous attitude would undermine the conviction in her threat and truly irritate the silly bitch. Nevertheless, he nodded. "My dear Doctor, we take the next step so soon!"


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Paupers Drop - Sinclair Deluxe**

Edward sat quietly, cradling Andrew Ryan's genetic key in his hands. He'd taken it with him when he left Minerva's Den, as insurance to stop Dr Wells from simply locking him out again for good. His leg was jiggling as he tried to hold in his new found excitement. Grace Holloway came around the corner from her small kitchen carrying a tray with two cups of sweet tea.

"So you're with me?" Edward chirped with anticipation of a favorable answer.

"I think when Dr Lamb killed Sheridan Fortesque, a part of him latched on to you. His desire to buy up as much of the city as possible - we all knew how strongly he wanted to get onto the Rapture Council... when there was one. I never thought I'd see such a hunger in your eyes though Edward..."

He wasn't sure if she meant that positively, or as a critisism, but either way there was clearly doubt in her voice, and it dug into Edwards throbbing heart like a dagger. He had spent most of his life before Rapture wracked with self-doubt and little self-worth, but now he was surer than ever that he could do something monumental - in honor of his murdered lover and his fallen home, and this negative attitude so early on from Grace angered him.

"I'm not setting out to be the next Andrew Ryan - I simply want to save us all from drowning! When I turned the Thinker back on, he confirmed the city has only a few weeks left before everything is lost - everything! It seems to me that everyone is ready to just roll over onto their backs and wait for death, when we have laid out before us a colossal structure that can offer us, even now, a future unparalleled! It just needs us to fight for it, to work and sweat a little and get things up and running." He insisted, ignoring the tray that Grace held patiently in front of his face, waiting for him to take his tea so she could take a seat beside him.

"I'm not setting out to offend you son, I'm sure in your heart you have good intentions. But in honesty, I think you are right about us... everyone in Rapture is ready to die. We live daily with the threats of collapse, floods or brutal murder at the hands of a splicer... we've all focused so much on just surviving, that we've forgotten how to live. There's nothing left to live for down here." She sighed, as Edward took his tea finally with a confused expression on his face. She let her aching body slump into her seat and sipped her own tea.

"But if we can just bring people together for one last push - I can start to get the Big Daddies working on key structures again. Sure I'll admit that its likely we'll have to abandon some less vital parts of the city, give them over to the ocean. But we can start with one large area of accomodation, make it safe and comfortable. Then focus on maintaining our oxygen supply from Arcadia and our food supply from Neptune's Bounty - start getting some submarines fishing out of Port Neptune again!" He could have gone on and on with his dreams and loose plans, but still Grace sat silently, stirring her tea with a silver spoon. Her refusal to show any interest or excitement would have thrown him into a rage if he wasn't determined to keep his cool in hope of winning her over in the end.

"I won't stand in your way Edward if you want to try, and neither will I criticize your efforts to anyone I speak to. But I fear I wouldn't be any help to you in rallying support - as my heart just isn't in living anymore, I'm sorry. When the time comes for the sea to take me, I'll be ready and willing." She let a few tears roll down her cheeks, and sniffled. "Just don't go too far with this... give people the choice, offer them your dreams and see what you get. But the people have been let down twice now, by Ryan and Dr Lamb... don't expect them to throw you their trust that easy..."

Edward could have let himself be deflated by Grace's words right there, but he looked long and hard at the key in his hands, and reminded himself of the immense power that he had to wield through The Thinker, and indeed this key itself when used down in Hephaestus or elsewhere in the city.

"Tell people what I intend to do Grace, speak to what remains of the family for me at least... tell them I offer them not a religion or a philosophy, but simply a chance to live and prosper again. I will rebuild what I can... and they had better be behind me..." He didn't mean to add such a stern note at the end, and Grace had whinced at it, clearly she too was trying to figure out if Edward had meant that as a threat.

He was still trying to figure it out himself as he left.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Arcadia**

Jack had always looked back on Arcadia with favor - it had perhaps been one of the most fascinating and impressive parts of Rapture that he had seen. He was, in a way, pleased to have the chance to see it again. Much of it however looked very unwell - a murky line along the walls and spoiled, marsh-like expanses of mud where the luscious lawns had once been indicated that the area had been deep underwater for quite some time until recently - he guessed when power had been restored to the pumps. Many of the plants and bushes had drowned and died, and the tree's didn't look very happy at all.

Jack looked up at the large window of Dr Julie Langfords office, and smiled as he recounted her brash but reasonable persona - he had hated watching her die at Ryan's hands, and often wished he had fought harder to help her. Cautiously, he stepped into the entrance of her laboratories, and began to retrace his steps, back up through the exterior tunnel towards the main labs. Except for the inevitable dust and rust that comes with time, it seemed to have been left relatively untouched since he was last there - a Big Daddy still lay in the exact same spot where he had taken it down, although splicers had been tearing apart his suit for parts.

Eventually, Jack came to Dr Langfords office at the top of the laboratory complex. Although worn and faint, the numbers '9457' could still be made out scribbled on the glass - Dr Langford's last spit in Jack's fathers eye. Jack had been filled with such hatred for Andrew Ryan after he'd watched Langford die - he wondered now how differently he'd have felt if he had known at the time Ryan was his father.

For a brief, nostalgic glimpse, Jack stepped back into her old office. She'd been kicked about by something, but the doctors skeletal remains lay in the corner against the wall, her turquoise dress sodden and stuck to the floor. As Jack looked upon the poor women with pity, his attention was drawn to a glowing red light and metallic wheezing across the room, coming from a large heap of something piled on the floor beneath the wall safe. Pushing aside a wall of stacked crates and boxes, Jack froze and gulped hard, as he looked down on a Big Sister, her legs sprawled awkwardly outwards and her chest heaving and convulsing as she struggled for breath. Her head moved slightly to face him - she could see him, but whether unwilling or unable to do so, she didn't react.

"Are you alright?" Jack whispered at first, raising a hand palm up to signal that he meant no hostility. The lanky form didn't respond still, but wheezed slightly louder. She didn't seem injured from first glance - there were no visible wounds. Her ADAM extraction jar however at the top of her syringe was empty - Jack wondered if this could be ADAM withdrawal for a Big Sister.

This was an opportunity too convenient to pass by, yes Jack was keen to make his way to find The Thinker and whoever was in control of it, but first and foremost he wanted a trial of Tenenbaums formula that she had entrusted to him - if that didn't work as intended, then his entire mission was bust anyway. Being sure to move slowly, Jack turned and slid the door to the room closed. He then swung open his pistol and checked it was fully loaded - once he injected the Big Sister he had no idea how long he would have to keep a vigil whilst the serum got to work.

Again with great caution, Jack began to crawl closer to the Big Sister. He kept gently speaking to her, so that she'd at least know at all times where he was, and that any sudden moves he made wouldn't trigger any sort of confrontation from her. Once he was up as close as he could get to her head, he slowly lay a hand down on her chest. "Listen to me - I want to help you... I'm just going to remove your helmet..." At that she did groan, and tried for a moment to sit up, but she was too weak and quickly gave up. Jack unfasten a buckle around her neck, and carefully turned the heavy sphere until it came away. Beneath the steel and glass, the poor girl looked almost identical to the first Jack had met - youthful still and pretty, but very drained and pale. As with his girls, all 'Sisters' except the recent abductions from the surface had been born in Rapture, and therefore never had the kiss of the sun on their skin. Her eye were erratic and scared, and remained fixed on Jack as he pulled open his satchel and took out a small syringe - half the size of an EVE Hypo. The liquid inside was glowing, a bright green.

Jack felt the nagging of his conscience, that he was using this girl as a test rat with only Tenenbaums assurance that it would work, but with little choice, Jack tapped the needle and held is next to her neck. "Please don't worry my dear - I don't know if you remember Brigid Tenenbaum?"

The girl stopped shaking for the very first time, and seemed to be listening to him more intently. He almost got a smile at the mention of the Doctors name.

"You do? That's good... this is from her. She's sent me here with this to help you and all the sisters!" Jack comforted her as he slid the needle under her skin, and injected the fluid. It was so luminescent, that he could follow its progress beneath her skin as it fed into her veins and began to circulate. Suddenly she gasped aloud, and her back lurched into a stiff arch. Then came that piercing, agonizing scream from deep in her chest, before the girl fell unconscious.

Jack collapsed back onto the floor, his heart beating so loud he could hear it. He didn't know if any splicers would have heard the scream - he'd have to be ready, but there was no running for now. All he could do was sit, wait and watch.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Rapture**

When the city of Rapture had been at the height of its prosperity, it had been home to almost fifty thousand people. Years of growing ADAM addiction and the civil war of 1959 and the following onslaught of attacks brought that number down significantly, and by the time Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine had both been killed, Rapture was populated by only twenty to thirty thousand. In the following few years, the great depression and fall into anarchy left thousands more dead through suicide, murder or the gradual flooding of the cities buildings.

Rapture's exact population was now anyone's guess. The empty streets and halls often made Rapture feel entirely deserted, but there were still hundreds hiding in barricaded homes, others moving frequently from one secluded spot to the next just trying to stay alive. All had long since given up hope of ever seeing the sun again, or living a life of normality and security. Most felt betrayed and humiliated, as at one time they had all placed their trust and their lives in Andrew Ryan's hands, and a further majority had since had either backed the two-faced con artist Fontaine, or had their minds warped and loyalty won by the delusional, psychotic Dr Sofia Lamb. Wherever the people of Rapture had chosen to place their faith, they had been used and abused, and dumped like slag when they were no longer useful.

Yet, when word had spread that Sofia Lamb had vanished, the people did not rejoice as they had perhaps done at the news of Ryan or Fontaine's death - for they were all now accustomed to having someone in charge, they expected and accepted someone oppressing them daily. So when the public address speakers fell silent, most were left far more afraid than they had ever felt before.

It was therefore both a terrifying shock, but also a subconscious relief, when on that day - the speakers came back to life. Down every passageway, through each chamber and atrium of Rapture, Edwards voice was heard at once by all.

"People of Rapture - I beg of you all to hear me now. Please... give me these few minutes to speak to you and offer you my dream, so that we can hopefully share it." He paused, as the echo of his last few words rebounded for a while through the corridors.

"As I'm sure you all know by now, Sofia Lamb has left us - fled to the surface like a whipped dog when we all saw through her lies. It was not our fault that we believed in her, for she promised us so much when we all had so little left."

Across the city, ears were perked, startled whispers bounded around as they waited for the next sentence. "But whilst Lamb persecuted the innocent and murdered at will in the name of the greater good, she let our great city crumble around us! She sat and watched as our homes were flooded, our food supplies dwindled! And now, thanks to her - our time is growing dangerously short, to save Rapture, to save ourselves..."

Some that were listening, even those spliced to insanity, began to nod in understanding, even agreement. Others, loyal members of the now defunct 'Rapture Family' held back their instincts with doubt, and growled in anger at the slandering of Sofia Lamb's name, yet none stopped listening.

"I am not Andrew Ryan. I lived and worked within the system, just like all of you. I suffered and lost much during the war, just like all of you. But through it all, I still love Rapture - it is my home, it is OUR home!" He raised his voice with passion and emphasis.

"A few days ago, I awoke 'The Thinker', and gave us back our lights and power. As of today, I have saved Arcadia and the fishing docks from being lost to the sea. That I have achieved as one man alone. Think what I could achieve tomorrow, with all of you by my side! I see Rapture not only dragged from the edge of oblivion, but I see it reborn through all of us! If you want to save this great city, if you want your life back - I ask only that you come together in peace and friendship tomorrow by the Rapture Dedication Fountain on High Street, where at 5pm I will answer your questions, give your thoughts a platform from where they can be heard, and together we can work to forge a future! Rise, Rapture, Rise!"

The speakers cut off, and Edward collapsed back into the wingback chair. He had been shaking the whole time, his finger trembling uncontrollably as it had held down the 'speak' button on the microphone. He looked upon the pile of transcripts of Andrew Ryan speeches that he had gathered with extreme gratitude, and then to his left where he'd position his favorite framed picture of Sheridan - both great men had helped him deliver that speech. Still his heart was beating with the apprehension, the question of how his 'call to arms' would be reacted to out in the streets of Rapture.

**Paupers Drop - Limbo Room**

Grace sat on a bar stool she'd pulled from the wreckage and sat up against the stage she used to perform on, her arms folded upon it cradling her head. She'd heard every word of Edward's public address, but could hear nothing in it other than the words of Andrew Ryan, re-hashed and re-shaped certainly, but still she couldn't shake her sincere doubts. She had come to befriend Edward despite their history, still in her heart of hearts she couldn't condone his homosexuality, despite the willingness of the rest of the city to do so. But Grace feared that their new friendship may be tested by even greater strains in the near future - it was for that reason she hoped desperately that it would be words only that Edward managed. She hoped this was as far as he would come, and that the rest of the city would pay him no heed, seeing him for the insecure, inexperienced boy he really was at heart. However - if Edward did gather momentum and start to forge a new great chain, Grace feared she may have to betray her promise not to stand in his way - she instantly regretted even making such a promise. Rapture was finished, had been for years, and no matter how hard Edward may kick to try and keep the cities head above water, they all needed to drown. Rapture needed to die - for death would still be far better than a third term in a re-hashed vision of the same, gilded cage.

Her heart sank and she buried her face deeper between her arms, as she heard cheering and howls of delight from outside. In unison the gaggle of splicers in the distance cried out " _Rise! Rapture! Rise!_ "


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Point Prometheus**

There was tension in the room, no hiding it. The scientists and technicians that had burrowed themselves away in the back offices and maintenance tunnels of Point Prometheus had been bloody hard to find, and even harder to gather in one place.

Edward had taken the precaution of routing two Big Sisters via The Thinker's radio control system to escort him on his journey to Point Prometheus. Not having ventured there in years, he hadn't known how many Big Daddies were still wondering around, or how splicer infested the place had become. It had proven a wise decision in the end, as sending the Big Sisters into the vents and tunnels had soon persuaded the stupid, paranoid idiots to flee from their hiding places, and Edwards two handy hench-women had very quickly herded the small group of lab-coat wearing lunatics into the Main Hall just outside the Metro station. When Edward approached them, he was concerned about how intimidating the two Big Sisters appeared, looming over the flock of scientists with their glowing red lights and extended needles. Edward gestured for them to take a few steps back and calm down, which instantly both did. He smiled in astonishment at the ease with which he gave commands to two such fearsome beasts.

The group infront of him was made up of three women and seven men, all now somewhere around their sixties and eighties, withered and wild-eyed. They all poised for what they tought would be the order for the Big Sisters to strike, and even leapt when Edward opened his mouth simply to speak - he wanted to chuckle but restrained himself.

"Ladies and Gentlemen... Doctors. Please don't look so concerned, it is me that has come here to beg for your help, it is me that should be intimidated by standing in the presence of such genius!" He smiled, again playing the flattery card as it had seemed to get results with the barmy Dr Wells. The group exchanged frantic, suspicious looks among themselves.

"Are you the man who spoke over the radio yesterday? About saving the city?" One older man spoke at last with a thick Russian accent - Dr Petrov going by his badge.

Edward grinned and nodded in confirmation. "And I stand by every word I said!"

One of the older female scientists, Dr Violet Arenberg, took a step closer. "How do you think we can help you? You won't win us over by chasing us down with Big Sisters..." she snapped angrily. Her face was slanted to one side and one eye seemed to bulge from its socket, she was clearly partial to a drop of ADAM or two.

Ignoring the dig about the Big Sisters, Edward waved his arms outwards in a friendly, open gesture. "Only you can help me with this one my friends! Your specialties lie in producing Big Daddies and Little Sisters, which means of course you are all familiar with ADAM and processing it. Am I right?" Their silence was sufficient confirmation.

"If we are to start bringing the city back onto its own feet, we will need to settle the splicers down first, otherwise they will just tear apart anything we repair." He began, nervous that he wouldn't word correctly what he was trying to put across.

"You want to start feeding them ADAM again - you want us to start processing sea slugs and churning out more ADAM. Dr Petrov interrupted, impatience and clear disapproval in his tone.

"Trust me Doctor, I wish I didn't have to ask such a thing. ADAM is a blight on Raptures scientific record - drove us all up the wall and tore the city apart. My vision for Rapture, eventually, is one without a single drop of the bloody stuff in circulation. However, we have to calm the hoards before we can get anywhere near saving them." He kept reminding himself in his mind - _maintain eye contact, contact means honesty and integrity. maintain eye contact!_

Dr Petrov still looked miserably pessimistic, yet was the first to seemingly take Edwards ideas on board seriously. "Point Prometheus is in bad shape - not much around here has been used in years. But we may be able to get at least a few of the big guys back outside to search for slugs. It will be slow work done all by hand, but the slugs haven't been seriously harvested since the war, so there should at least be ample numbers of them out there to be found."

The less enthusiastic Dr Arenberg span about to glare at Petrov. "You really think we should help him? We know nothing about him, not even who he is! We have no assurance he can manage any of what he is proposing, it could all be a load of empty promises and hot air."

Edward was annoyed by her interrupting the conversation when it had shown a small glimpse of promise. "Listen all of you, I am sincere - how could I not be with the fact staring us in the face that if we do nothing, the city will die in a few weeks. And you do know me, my name is Edward Carson..." His own voice was less patient this time, and irritated.

"Carson? You ran that huge investment firm with Lord Ambrose didn't you? You owned Austen Bathysphere and Talos Tower... you two were some kind of fruits too as I recall. How could you know when Rapture will end, nobody knows what the city can take..." Dr Arenberg fought back. "I have access to 'The Thinker', and it has confirmed an exact date and time that all systems will fail. So unless you help me now - you had better instead start getting your affairs in order and be ready to meet the rushing waters that will carry you from this life into the next!" He bit this time, but the fire in his retaliation earned him a small smile and titter of approval from Dr Petrov.

"You make a valid point there, Carson." Dr Petrov spoke out, using Edward's surname with respect.

"Help me - give me a supply of ADAM to start reigning in the splicers, and I will in return provide what security I can put together for Point Prometheus... you'll all be able to breath a little easier and stop watching over your shoulders..." Growing tired already of arguing, Edward played on the paranoia they had all displayed when he'd first tried to summon them all. At the promise of safety, there were a few more smiles that time.

"It will have to be a learning curve for both sides, Carson. Call it a temporary agreement - let's see how well you do. In the mean time, we'll see what ADAM we can give you to get things moving." Dr Petrov offered a hand shake that Edward snatched very quickly, bursting with relief at having passed the first hurdle.

"I worked with Tenenbaum... she would have approved of your vision to eradicate ADAM." Petrov continued as he held Edwards hand in a strong grip. Dr Arenberg tried to hide fer facial deformities in shame.

"And many of us shared her reluctance in the end to produce it. You offer us perhaps atonement for what we did with it. If we need to produce a little bit now, in order to see it expunged in the end, then so be it."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Arcadia - Langford Laboratories**

"We don't relish strangers! Be gone!" The shrieking splicer squealed as she let off a hail of bullets from her hiding place behind a large filing cabinet. Whilst her insanity made her shots frequent and intense, Jack was still blessed with clarity of vision and the ability to make a precise shot. He waited for her to leap out to take her next shot, and was ready the instant she did. He got the bullet directly between her dark, mad eyes. She began to cross her eyes as if trying to see her own gunshot wound, before falling back to the floor, dead. Jack was satisfied with the kill, but still found that he regretted it - nobody that had come to Rapture had ever intended to wind up a raving lunatic addicted to a wonder drug. She had been the sixth to show up in the last two hours - since that broadcast throughout Rapture, the splicers had grown bold again, almost confident. They'd been noticeably on the move, all passing through Arcadia towards the tunnels that led in the direction of the city center. Jack had been forced to leave the Big Sister he was monitoring in her state of slumber to come down and guard the entrance.

He approached the corpse of the splicer he'd gunned down, and quickly took a scrounge through her pockets, hoping for a few rounds of ammunition she'd had left over, or maybe even a PEP Bar - he hadn't been able to venture out far enough for something to eat in hours.

Jack began to recount the broadcast in his mind - at last he had heard the voice of the one person he could count on to have a stable mind still, this mysterious chap that had just made a fresh promise to keep the city alive. Of that intention, Jack had two minds. He was on the first hand dubious - well aware that anyone that had come to ruling Rapture prior had fallen into a psychotic madness and as a result instead, nearly torn the city apart. But neither could Jack deny a glimmer of hope - his respect for his fathers reasons for building Rapture made the idea of saving Rapture appealing, provided there could be some guarantee it would be different this time. The fact that this new 'saviour' professed to be a humble citizen rather than a pure-bred tyrant bode well.

He finished turning out the splicers pockets, and rose back up straight, only to leap off the ground at the shock when the scream rang out. It was a blood-curdling, ear-splitting scream - a Big Sister's scream. Jack crouched into a defensive position, and frantically looked around - finally spotting the predatory, poised silhouette of a Big Sister in the corner of the room, pinned into the corner, half way up the wall by only her hands and feet. He could feel her studying him through the glass, her helmet tilted slightly to one side as she tried to make him out. Jack began to try and plan a reaction, but the metal beast launched from her hiding place and flew through the air, across the room towards him.

Jack cried out, taken off guard by her sudden leap. He staggered back and tried to lift his gun to aim, but the unfurling body was hurtling towards him fast with its syringe held out ready - until suddenly something appeared from the shadows, and struck the Big Sister mid-air, carrying her screaming off course into the next room. As soon as he could pull himself together from fright, Jack ran in pursuit of the Big Sister - finding her in the laboratory beyond, her body having been slammed into a large refrigeration unit. She now slumped over, sat on the floor beside it, groaning and whining incoherently. What struck Jack next, was what stood over her - it was the Big Sister from Langford's office - the one he'd been holding a vigil beside for hours now. She hadn't bothered with her helmet - her face turned to Jack, heaving for breath after her struggle with the other Sister. However - this time, her complexion was less ashen, it was brighter, and if he wasn't mistaken in the gloom, her cheeks were growing rosy and plump. There was new, energized sparkle in her eyes.

He thought for a second she was going to smile, but before it happened, she looked down at the heavy, bulky equipment strapped to her arm - the ADAM gathering syringe. Rather than smile, her face contorted with irritation and hatred, and in a swift swipe she tore the syringe from her arm and threw it down.

"Tell me..." She spoke! It was sudden and out of the blue, but clear. Jack perked up and took a cautious step closer, his heart beating as he dared to confirm the success of Tenenbaums serum that he had injected the girl with.

"Who am I?" She asked, the meek, gentle voice so very alien in comparison to her metallic, intimidating body. Jack held out a hand, and smiled. "I don't know your name... but you are a girl, a pretty girl. You've just woken up from a very bad dream thats all..."

In his head, Jack was leaping with ecstasy - Tenenbaum really had created a cure for ADAM addiction - it worked, and already he could see the malformations ADAM had caused in the girl's body beginning to subside, just as the Doctor had professed they would - she'd seemed to know from a previous successful project.

"Will you help her too? Help her wake up?" The sister pointed down at the other that she had incapacitated.

Jack nodded quickly, his thoughts already on the satchel he'd carried down here with him, full of vials of Dr Tenenbaums cure.

"Of course I will - we'll help all of your sisters, all over Rapture."


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**High Street - Rapture Dedication Fountaine**

Edward had spent the day in a spin, rushing to compose himself as best he could, scrubbing a worn old suit to within an inch of its life, and washing his greasy hair, all in an attempt to try and resemble the respectable gentleman he once had been. There was little he could do to combat the war ADAM had raged against his skin, but he'd spent his final hour led out straight on the floor of his old Mercury Suites apartment, trying to fight against the hunch in his back - he wanted to appear tall and firm before whoever showed up today to hear him speak, he wanted to ignite the same passion and admiration from his audience that Andrew Ryan had managed to, he even tried at one point to mimic Andrew Ryan's burly swagger in a shattered mirror.

Now fighting with a sore spine as well as jittery nerves, Edward stood on the rim of the Rapture Dedication fountain, having kicked clear the debris and litter. He'd found a small stash of cosmetic plasmids in Anna Culpeppers apartment, and had allowed himself the small indulgence of swelling his cheeks and tightening his skin to appear less a victim of time and undernourishment than he really was. He'd flinched when the first few splicers had crawled out of the cracks in the walls and the ceiling, comparatively few chose to use the more conventional doorways anymore.

Once more Edward had elected to stand two Big Sisters in close proximity, he could hear them behind him, their heavy breathing echoing through their metallic suites, like the bellows of an old furnace. He'd managed to persuade a handful of the scientists from Point Prometheus to attend, to stand beside him in a display of faith. Dr Wells of course had flat out refused to leave Minerva's Den, which whilst expected, had angered Edward alot more than he had expected of himself - when considering the scale of what he was proposing, such reluctance was really irritating him lately.

Letting the nerves subside, Edward did begin to smile when the flow of splicers and other solemn survivors continued to fill the large atrium - Rapture felt so empty and abandoned lately, that even Edward was stunned to see just how many people were still alive. The splicers eyed up those who weren't ADAM addicts with a murderous, hungry anticipation, but their reluctance to pounce only filled Edward with more hope that these people were sincere about hearing what he had to say. He openly let out a gleaming smile when Grace Holloway appeared from the top of a flight of stairs, struggling down each step with her walking stick, clutching a sawn-off shotgun in the other hand. She offered him a humble smile when she caught him watching her - but he could tell in her eyes, she was still clearly uncertain about all of this. Too excited by the swelling congregation before him, Edward just mentally waved off Grace's doubts - hell if she wanted to be left to drown so much, she'd have plenty of opportunity to do so soon.

Within ten minutes, the entire lower level of High Street was filled, Edward looked around and let the people see his optimistic, astonished gasps at how many people were still alive, sure it would fill them too with a new-found sense of hope.

He waved his arms above their heads and gestured for everyone to fall into silence. He then began to gesture towards them all with a wide smile. "Well... look at us! Just look!" He called out - the great congregation began to look at each other and across the great hall to one another.

"We are all here... we are _all_ still here!" He began, in his mind already sizing up some of the men for construction work he had in mind... "For the first time in years, we have come together in one place, as a community..." Edward pushed himself to keep making eye contact with as many people as he could, it was awkward for him, but he had to start building some trust.

"Too many people have tried, even _fought_ to divide the people of Rapture, when from the very beginning, from the day Rapture's first foundations were beaten into the ocean floor, we were supposed to be a community, a city working together towards a better world..." He took a deep breath, his mind was working in overdrive to keep up the momentum he had built in his speech - "that is why all of you have come to meet with me here today - because despite everything we and this great city have been through, we remain the geniuses and visionaries that made this great city a reality, and that cannot be taken from us."

Many of the crowd were tuned in, but Edward could feel the skeptical glare from Grace Holloway from the far side of the room, and she wasn't the only one.

"I know many, many of you feel betrayed by our city. We have lost so much, and been stabbed in the back and used as worthless pawns by people like Fontaine and Sofia Lamb in the pursuit of their own agendas. I don't blame any of you for remaining doubtful in what I am suggesting, but the fact you have come and stay here now to hear more tells me we are all ready to take our city back, and make her shine once again!" Edward went slightly too far in his roar, and the silence from the crowd rather than the cheers Edward had hoped for made him feel a fool - and in his chest, that made him feel angry.

"So down to it, Ladies and Gentlemen. We have but a few weeks before Rapture collapses, before our power dies, the pumps stop and the air is no longer breathable." _Not going to respond to enthusiasm, then I'll threaten you with the bloody facts of it,_ Edward thought to himself. He saw many gasp and shudder as he spilled the facts out again to them. "A few weeks left to live, that is what we all have. That is currently all we have to look forward to, a certain death." He let his tone grow slightly more somber, but tried to keep the empathy, that he was rapidly running out of as he watched their useless, depressed expressions staring mindlessly back at him.

"I, Edward Carson, have awoken 'The Thinker', ladies and gentleman. You have all felt the warmth returning to the living areas, breathed the recycled air coming back through the ducts. There is life left in Rapture yet, just as there is so much life left in all of us! We just have to throw off this dogged determination to lay down and fucking die, and get to work!" He shouted now, without empathy or tact, but desperation to get through to this crowd of imbeciles. It worked - then, for the first time, came the claps. Only a few at first, but more soon joined in until there was a modest round of applause.

"I have a plan, my friends, _we_ have a plan..." He gestured with his arms to show the _'we_ ' included them all. "Help me, follow my lead, and you can all have homes again, safe and comfortable. We can have families again... be a family! Then once more we can be proud to call Rapture the greatest city on earth!"

In the corner, Grace Holloway sat on an overturned trash can and watched as the hands began to go up as people posed questions to Edward, about how he planned to re-build a failing system, how he planned to save them all. Even she had felt a stab of optimism in her old heart when listening to his words, yet she had heard all the same words before, from many different mouths. Andrew Ryan had built Rapture with his own established motives, Fontaine had swindled his way down to Rapture with his own, established motives. Dr Sofia Lamb had arrived by invitation, with her own established motives. All had left Rapture burning in their wake. Edward, for now at least, had never demonstrated any such motives. In many ways he was a Rapture baby - reborn into a new man once he'd arrived back in 1946. He'd tasted the same losses as everyone else - Grace just hoped that was enough to keep his motives pure...

Jack hadn't made his presence known - he remained hidden on the upper promenade, watching the meeting below through a broken railing. He was as equally astonished at how many people were still alive as Edward had professed to being in his opening speech. Even when Jack had arrived back in 1960, the city had felt like a graveyard, with all the sane-minded citizens barricaded in their homes, fearful of splicer attacks. Jack smiled slightly, it was admirable that the city limped on still, regardless of anything else, it was testament to the survival instincts of the human race. He wanted to meet this Edward chap though, Jack wanted to see if this was another wolf in sheeps clothing, or whether he meant what he was saying. Andrew Ryan, for better or for worse, had been Jack's father, and he now felt slightly invested in how the city would end up. For years he had lived on the surface with his daughters sure that the city would have been entirely lost soon after his departure. Dr Tenenbaums revelation to him that Rapture lived on under the leadership of someone other than Andrew Ryan had both shocked and sickened Jack. Despite the choices and paths his father Andrew Ryan had taken, he had been an astonishing man, and probably the only man that could have ever built something as miraculous as Rapture - so the news that a mere Psychiatrist with a socialist agenda had felt entitled to take control of Rapture had angered him, and re-opened old doubts about his own choices back in 1960 - choices to follow the wrong voices, to be fooled by Fontaine, and to murder his own father without the foresight to discover the truth before doing so. His final choice, to abandon his fathers city, when he could have stayed and chartered a new course for all those left alive.

At least this new figure - Edward Carson, had taken responsibility for the people. Jack watched with both envy and regret.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Limbo Room**

Grace sat and watched the crowd in the Limbo Room. She couldn't tell when it had last been that full - even before the New Years Eve riots. It wasn't open for business of course, hadn't been taking money or putting on a show in almost a decade. Today however, Paupers Drop and especially Skid Row were packed full, of settlers that had begun pouring in from all over the city, ready to be shown their new digs in the Sinclair Deluxe Hotel.

Grace was in two minds, and not afraid to admit it. She still had her doubts of course, yet the crowd of people that were passing through Skid Row could have almost been described as civil. Plenty were addicts, it was obvious from their eccentric shrieks and disfigured faces, but they still formed up in orderly queues, and clutched suitcases full of personal belongings they had somehow managed to cling on to. A week ago, Grace would have ducked and dived if any of them had come skulking through the drop for fear of them ripping her head clean off, but now here she was, pointing them to the lav's or pulling them out a stool to sit down.

Edward had delivered on this at least, the first promised step of his grand design. He'd had 'The Thinker' route almost a dozen Big Daddies to conduct emergency repairs on the Sinclair Deluxe, ready to receive everyone he'd evicted from the nearby neighborhoods, which he soon intended to disconnect and allow to flood, in order to conserve power and air for the inhabited areas that he designated.

She didn't like the large brute's that Edward had asked to stand as security operatives throughout Paupers Drop however - she'd never liked those mindless, British steroid sacks. They stood snarling and glaring from beneath the brows of their bowler hats, eagerly waiting for the splicers to loose face and let their chaotic natures run riot. They seemed to grow angrier the longer the peace throughout the drop lasted.

Nobody had ever contested Grace's unofficial position as district governor, even after she'd lost her blinkered faith in Dr Lamb, and as such Edward had been happy to send her a message through the Neumo system asking her to remain governor of Paupers Drop, with the added promise of a seat on a new 'Governing Council' he was apparently setting up. It sounded far too similar to the original Rapture Council for her comfort, but she'd accepted. She felt compelled to keep a close eye on Edward, and accepting a seat on this council was an easy route into the decision making.

**Minerva's Den - The Thinker**

Dr Well's had completed the customised shut-down programme that Edward had agreed, along with a few of Rapture's ex-engineers who had offered their expertise. Once she fed the data into The Thinker, approximately forty-five percent of the buildings in the southern district of Rapture had begun to shut down entirely, and would soon be left to the ocean's mercy. The Thinker's predictions calculated almost a fifty-percent energy saving as a result for Paupers Drop, and a vast extension onto the life expectancy of the Southern district's oxygen reserves.

"Are we nearly ready, Doctor?" Edward suddenly appeared from the nearby staircase, and joined Dr Wells in the control booth. "We have already started the preliminary shut down sequence, so far everything except pumps and minimal power - my calculations indicate that if we can make equal cut backs in the cities other districts, we may be able to conserve enough oxygen to last until we can get Arcadia producing again." She didn't smile with pride over her work, she merely reeled off the information as if she too were mechanical.

"Fantastic. Now we just need to keep peace down in the drop until we can get some ADAM out of Point Prometheus - it won't be long before the addicts start getting jittery without their regular hunting grounds." Edward spoke half to himself, as his mind drifted to his next meeting with Dr Petrov.

He had one foot out of the control booth, when suddenly a massive alarm rang out, and red beacons began to flash throughout the room.

"What is wrong?" He called out to Dr Wells, who had leapt from one printing readout to another. "It's the shut down sequence - some of the old control circuits have burnt out! We are going to loose the pumps in the Ryan Amusements Building twelve hours early..." She barked out as she prepared to cancel the shut down. "It will flood in minutes!"

"So what?" Edward shouted back. "We always knew we were going to loose that building as par of the course, let it flood."

Dr Wells span him an aggravated look, "There are still people in there you fool. They have been told to wait there for trains to take them through to Paupers Drop."

Edward fell silent for a moment, thinking. "If you stop the whole programme, can't we just resume once we've evacuated Ryan Amusements?" He wasn't getting very hopeful vibes from the panicking doctor who was throwing hundreds of switches and waiting eagerly for a favorable response from the control panel.

"The control circuits that have failed - some of them control key shut down systems. There is no stopping it now, we are committed." She snapped, "I only have one option for you - I have one active transfer circuit that could draw power away from Arcadia for a few hours - long enough to evacuate Ryan Amusements."

Edward hesitated. "What risk would that pose to Arcadia? That is our one and only hope for continued oxygen..." Dr Wells quickly input some numbers into The Thinkers terminal and waited for the result. "23% chance of main power failure to Arcadia, but it is likely the back-up power systems would hold long enough for us to make repairs..." She turned to Edward with an expression that confirmed the decision was on his shoulders, he felt almost as if she was telling him this was his just desserts for wanting to make these big decisions. He stuttered twice, but not because he couldn't make up his mind, but because he knew he couldn't appear to make such a decision so easily. Arcadia could not be put at risk under any circumstances - there was no disputing that.

"Without Arcadia, everyone dies. Rapture Dies." He concluded.

Dr Wells glared back, but did not argue. "The Thinker... dies" he finished, knowing then was the time for an indisputable threat. With a flash of understanding across her face, Dr Wells nodded, and stepped back from the controls.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Ryan Amusements**

Jack had never been to this part of the city before - and he was rather impressed. After the great meeting on High Street, Jack had decided that if he wanted to effectively deliver his cure across the city, he would rather do so with the backing of whoever had control over the city at the time. He knew all too well how inhospitable Rapture could be if you were constantly swimming against the tide, and he couldn't risk any harm coming to his supply of the ADAM addiction cure.

He had therefore made his way across the city to witness this migration of Rapture citizens, and to try and gauge the type of people he would be dealing with, and also to try and figure out how genuine this Edward Carson was - whether he could be trusted and would help to distribute the cure. Of course during the meeting, Edward had professed a desire to eradicate ADAM from circulation in the city all together, and that had been promising - but Jack knew better than to take anyone in Rapture on face value.

He had left his two Big Sisters waiting patiently in a small waiting area between the Atlantic Express Train station and the Ryan Amusements foyer, and was now walking from exhibit to exhibit, half paying attention to them, but also the large crowds waiting in the lower level of the main museum, and inside the 'Journey to the Surface' tunnels.

He saw one old woman click her fingers and emit a short burst of 'Incinerate', to light a small fire. Jack smiled, and was curious as to whether his re-written DNA would still be stable enough to channel a Plasmid - it had been nearly a decade after all, and he had been tempted when he had seen the 'Gatherers Garden' Plasmind vending machines in the 'Hall of the Future'. But he knew he had to contain his curiosity - the man with a cure for ADAM addiction couldn't very well walk around letting off Plasmids left and right, he had to set an example.

The citizens of Rapture than filled the museum reminded him of a refugee camp - the type he'd seen in news footage from all corners of the world, and he felt a degree of shame for writing them off so easily as mindless monsters - there were still human beings down here, and they deserved the consideration and care Edward appeared to be offering. What he was witnessing now was a very different view on Rapture to the one he had painted during his time there before - the 'spider' splicers remained firmly on the ground, and sat conversing, albeit in eccentric whistles and cackles, with 'Brute' and 'Leadhead' splicers. Perhaps it had always been as simple as them needing a stable figurehead. Perhaps Rapture would be saved after all.

Suddenly, there was a colossal explosion, somewhere deep beneath the museum. The entire building shook and crumbled, and the lights went out. The screaming began instantly, and Jack scrambled for something firm to grab hold of to prevent himself from being knocked down by those that had already begun panicking and running around. Within a few seconds the deep red emergency lighting came on, and a klaxon began to sound. A second explosion below... this one cracked the overhead canopy, and a stream of seawater began trickling to the floor.

Jack could feel vibrations shuddering through the buildings structure, and a strong, freezing wind began to tear up through the doorway from 'Journey to the surface', carrying with it the screams of the many that had been waiting patiently down there. Many had figured out what the wind and screams meant before the roar of the rushing water could be heard.

"The pumps have failed! It's flooding!" A crazed old man wailed as he was carried by the frenzied crowd trying to escape from the lower levels. Jack froze in horror, desperate to help but clueless how he could. He turned with regret and began to run for the exit, when a large slap of marble broke free from the wall and crashed to the floor in his path. As he waved the dust cloud away from his eyes, he suddenly had an idea. He could see down into the 'Journey to the Surface' hallway from where he stood - it hadn't yet begun to flood, he had time. He let himself flow with the fleeing masses through the Museum entrance, and by the time he was half across the foyer, he could see his two Big Sisters struggling towards him - coming to rescue him. They leapt up and through the air, over the heads of the people and landed either side of Jack, both taking a firm grip of one of his arms.

"Stop! We can't leave..." He shouted aloud as he felt them bracing, preparing to carry him with them through the air. "Do either of carry the 'Telekenisis' Plasmid? Can you move things with your mind?" He flicked between their two, glowing helmets. Both nodded, "Yes, we can..."

Jack gestured back over his shoulders towards the museum, "Then I need your help, all of these people need your help quickly!".

When the trio reached the central bridge of the Museum, water was already pouring through into the lower level, many still struggling through it to escape. They could wait no longer for more to make it out. "I need you girls to collapse that doorway, block it up!" Jack called out to his two companions. They didn't even question his instructions, but both threw their arms into the air, and summoned a cyclone of force, before casting it at speed towards the 'Journey to the surface' entrance.

The concrete and marble erupted in a massive cloud, and a wall of debris quickly blocked the entrance. The rush of seawater slowed to a small stream. "Now stop any leaks girls - can you cover the mound of rubble with a sheet of ice?" The Big Sister to his left waved her open hand forward, and instantly built a towering ice berg that stemmed the flow of water entirely.

The panicking crowd of people around him began to slow to a walking pace, many looking back with relief at the wall of stone and ice holding back the flood. It took only a few more minutes for the trapped screams from behind the wall to fall silent.


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Hephaestus Core - The Office of Andrew Ryan**

Edward's heart was thumping, and his hand shaking, as turned the leather chair back upright, and sat down into it. He stretched his arms out and let his hands come down to rest on Andrew Ryan's desk.

"Suits ya sir..." a tired looking Leadhead splicer - "Boxer", grumbled, albeit with sincerity, from the doorway. Edward hadn't dared hope for things too quickly, but here he sat not a day after his speech, with a group of ten men that had pledged him their allegiance, as he went about setting his plans in motion. He didn't kid himself that there weren't others that felt like Grace Holloway, skeptical and full of doubt, but unlike the civil discords that had begun alongside the revolutions against Ryan and Fontaine, Edward had the bonus that until his rallying cry, everyone had already resigned themselves to their impending death - so when he appeared with a Genetic Key and control over 'The Thinker' with an option other than death, it had been a simple case of Hobsons choice.

"But make sure none of that greedy bastard rubs off on ya sittin' there..." The splicer continued. Edward quickly reminded himself that at least half of those whose support he was seeking had fought against Andrew Ryan - he needed to concentrate alot more on distancing himself from the great man's influence and curb his passion whenever he spoke of him.

Edward had chosen to relocate his main base of control from Minerva's Den to Hephaestus - after-all, he had a direct control interface to the Thinker in the office there with him, and he was growing very weary of Dr Well's incessant bitching.

He looked around the closest man to the next, "I need you to lead some men down to the base of the central core, and disengage power couplings 115c through to 134a..." He instructed, as he read the circuits off the readout he had from 'The Thinker'. "They will no longer be required since we shut off power to those buildings."

The man nodded, turned and left. Edward relaxed slightly, he still felt very out of his depth giving instructions to men that would have tried to slit his throat a week ago for a half vial of ADAM. But since Dr Petrov had delivered him a small supply of ADAM that they'd already had in supply, these men had been all too happy to exchange work for some of that luminescent nectar.

Boxer took a step closer to the desk. "If ya don't mind me tellin' ya sir - as your on the subject of those buildings you shut off. Some of the boys that used to work on the power lines have been spoutin' off down in Pauper Drop, sayin' the incident in Ryan Amusements was avoidable..." Edwards childish smile faded away and he quickly looked up at Boxer's miserable, sagging face.

"What? And people believe it?" Boxer shrugged his shoulders lazily with little emotion. "I don't give a shit what went down sir, as long as I'm still breathin', but they're sayin' you would have had to make a conscious choice to let the amusement park drown... and the hundred and fifty people stuck down there..."

Edward sat back into the chair until it creaked. He didn't regret the choice he had been forced to make, even with good odds, the very suggestion of risking Arcadia's power was enough to turn his stomach. He hadn't enjoyed standing idle whilst knowing people were drowning down in the park, but neither had he felt any guilt. He had made the right choice, for the future survival of his home, his city.

"Let them talk for now... when I push a comfortable bed and fresh oxygen their way, they won't be so quick to point fingers." Edward snapped. He looked across the mahogany desk to that favorite portrait of Sheridan that he carried with him, that he had now given pride of place. _You'd handle this so much better than I_ , he thought to himself, wishing he had Sheridan's wisdom to fall back on now.

"Oh and one last thing to trouble you with, squire..." Boxer sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve between sentences, "...the geezer what stopped the flood, well he's here - right outside. wants to meet you, he does."

Edward had been about to make a fresh speech across the city, to congratulate them all on taking the first few steps towards a new future, and how they had successfully shut down surplus parts of the city to save air. He'd been giving deep thought to how he should address the incident in Ryan Amusements, and how he could somehow make those that had been killed martyrs to his cause.

"Very well... let him come in." Edward wasn't expecting much, he'd just heard word that someone had manage to contain the flooding, and that person had been hailed a hero by those he had saved. It had niggled him slightly, that this nobody had won higher praise for one simple act, than he had for all his efforts. He straightened his jacket, and with little interest rose to shake the mans hand as he walked in.

"Jesus Christ..." Edward spat, as his eyes fell upon the very image of a young Andrew Ryan.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**Hephaestus - The office of Andrew Ryan**

Jack felt slightly dizzy as he entered the room - so many conflicting emotions came rushing to the surface. In this room, he had met the tyrant Andrew Ryan, whom until that moment he had blindly hated with a murderous intent. In this room, he had beaten the great man - his father - to death, whilst discovering throughout the act that he was blindly under the influence of others. In this room, he had learned what a fool he had been, how he had been tricked and manipulated by Frank Fontaine. The world had changed for him in this room. It was far dirtier than last time, a decade of grime and rot had taken hold, and the stale scent of death hung thick in the air.

He had been on his guard walking through the group of grubby splicers that guarded the way into the office, one had been sniffing him as he walked past, trying to pick up the distinct smell of a recent infusion of EVE. He nevertheless put on a smile and walked with confidence when he entered the office and approached Edward Carson. With little to build an opinion on, Jack entered with the intention to give this chap the benefit of the doubt. Yet, regardless of his intentions, motives and morals, there was something about seeing someone taking Andrew Ryan's desk as their own - sitting in his office, surrounded by his accomplishments, now trying to hold dominion over it all. The feelings surprised Jack, and he wondered if deep down, he did harbor a little affection in hindsight towards his biological father after all.

The new occupier of Ryan's old office seemed to turn pale upon Jack's entrance, and his jaw dropped as he exclaimed "Jesus Christ!". Jack slowed his advance, and whilst working to keep his smile, tried to figure out what it was that had stunned the man so much. Jack wondered if perhaps their paths had crossed back in 1960, and that he simply didn't remember.

Jack held his hand out steadily offering a handshake, which to his delight, Edward eventually accepted whilst trying to speak through a flabbergasted stammer. "My apologies... I don't mean to seem rude, but has anyone told you that you look just like... "

"Andrew Ryan?" Jack chuckled. "I'm afraid to say I know it too well for my liking. My name is Jack... Jack Ryan." Jack grimaced at himself slightly when he used 'Ryan' as his surname. Naturally he hadn't chosen to keep that name, and had lived instead as Jack Perkins back up on dry land, ever since his personal mission to gather information on his biological mother had turned up her true birth name as Jennifer Mary Perkins - Jasmine Jolene being a later embellishment intended to befit an up and coming lady of stage and screen.

Edwards heart leapt so high it could have popped out of his mouth, and then sank so deep he could swear his feet were throbbing. He didn't know how to react, or even how he wanted to react. He was excited by anything related to Andrew Ryan, whom he and his late lover had always idolized, but there was something about this new, handsome face being a blood relation that troubled Edward, he felt the uncertainty in his gut.

"Ryan's son?" Edward coughed, dumbstruck. The splicers beside them all turned quickly at the mention of the name, and began eyeing the stranger with immense suspicion. Of course Edward knew the rumor, the story of Andrew Ryan's son - the man that had allegedly been the one to finally put an end to Frank Fontaine, with the help of some little sisters.

"But that was years ago - word was you made it back up to the surface?" Edward asked, gesturing for them both to take a seat at the desk. Jack was initially optimistic about Edward, simply by his gentle and slightly nervous demeanor, he seemed perfectly 'human' which in Rapture was a word that had lost much of its meaning.

Jack smiled as he recounted the tale of his final escape back to the surface. "That is true, I was able to return back topside, and I've been living in the United States ever since."

Edward listened keenly to every word, and it matched the stories he'd heard. But still he felt this budding doubt, a sort of wish not to entirely believe it, and consequentially, he wondered if this could instead be an elaborate hoax? Conveniently involving a dead ringer for the original Ryan. Still, Edward was eager to here more, to try and paint himself a clearer picture of the situation.

"What of the world above my friend? We've heard nothing of it in so long - did the great wars happen as your father predicted?" Edwards eyes were like saucers as he gazed upon the great man's near-reincarnation.

"My father...let's just refer to him as Andrew Ryan... whilst I admit he may not have been wrong to predict a turbulent future for the world, his paranoia got the better of him, and its what triggered much of his downfall from what I understand. There have been skirmishes of course between nations, and some close calls - but no, no nuclear wars. The world had progressed, moved on."

"Hmph, that's what any winning side would tell its children once the war was won." Boxer, the large splicer growled to himself. Edward waved off the mans comments with a flick of his wrist, and his face begged more information.

Jack poised to continue, but didn't know where to start. "There is a great deal I could tell you, Edward, but I must decline for now, as I have come to meet you for a reason, indeed the same reason that brought me back down here to Rapture" He took in a deep breath, deciding how best to broach the subject of clearing out the cities stock of Sisters, little and big. "I just have to say - I'm pleased to find so many people still alive down here. On my journey out, I wasn't sure how many survivors I'd come across, if any at all."

Edward smiled, and lent forward. "Since you left, a lot has happened... but we have endured." Jack nodded in understanding "Sofia Lamb..."

Edward was curious as to how Jack knew of her, but supposed he had been back in Rapture long enough to hear a few things.

"Sofia Lamb, precisely." Edward confirmed. "But something must have made you feel returning was worth the gamble that we were still alive down here? The city doesn't have long left in its current condition, she's bleeding oxygen and most of her vital machinery is woefully under powered. We have a reliable estimate from 'The Thinker' that Rapture's systems will fail in a few weeks. I'm pushing now for a last ditch attempt to save everyone... whatever you've come back down here for Jack, you may well be too late".

Upon this revelation, Jack decided to hold off discussing his cure for ADAM addiction for a moment. "If the city is collapsing, why not leave? I've gathered from others that Sofia Lamb has left Rapture, so surely with what is left of the Bathysphere's and equipment down here, you could mount some sort of evacuation?"

Edward's star-struck smile started to subside; "Rapture is our home. It gave me everything, and I gave everything to it. I will not abandon my city..." Jack was sure Edwards smile had almost become a snarl. As Edward broke eye contact and gave a passing glance of uncertainty to Boxer across the room, Jack felt yet another, almost jealous thump in his stomach, when Edward had referred to Rapture as 'his'. So far, Jack had certainly recieved no reassurance from this man that he was worthy of Rapture, of all Andrew Ryan's dreams and work. The pair locked eyes for a moment, and it was clear to both that the initial excitement was gone, and that both stood on their hind leg, waiting for the other to throw the next proverbial punch.

Jack knew that a confrontation of any degree could jeopardize his rescue mission

"I have no wish to impose myself upon your plans for Rapture, Mr Carson. God knows the poor souls down here need someone with a level head to watch out for them." He reach across the desk and offered his hand out. Hesitantly, Edward reached out and shook. His eyes were wide, he wasn't convinced.

"Then will you tell me, Jack Ryan, why _are_ you back down here?"

I've been sent back down here, by another that has since returned to the surface. Dr Brigid Tenenbaum. You may have heard of..." Jack tried to continue, but was cut short.

"Yes, everyone knows Tenenbaum. I can't say she won my admiration - she cheated my partner out of the Plasmid business in favour of Fontaine... she was as much a crook and a psycho as the rest of Fontaine's gang back in those days..." Edwards lips curled he frowned as he decribed her. "Most of us had thought her dead, she hadn't been sighted around Rapture since before Sofia Lamb left. Can't say I was sorry at the idea."

Jack felt he had no further recourse but to finally spell it out. "Well, she's sent me down here to bring all the children back up to the surface, and she's sent me armed with a cure for ADAM addiction."

Once more, the pair sat in silence.


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Minerva's Den - Rapture Central Computing - Office of Dr Lydia Wells (Formerly The Office of Reed Wahl)**

The old girl was typing frantically, punching the input keys with an eccentric determination, whilst frantically watching each of the four computer screens positioned above the user interface. The large window, since cleared of Reed Wahl's collage of photographs and insane scribblings, let a cerulean glow bathe her wrinkled, frowning face.

Edward sat in the chair on the other side of the desk, holding his forehead in one hand as he stared into the warping, water damaged floorboards. Despite a hurried clean up, Dr Wells still hadn't gotten around to clearing up the painted words 'The Thinker Knows' that Wahl had inscribed across the floor.

"Well there is certainly going to be some sort of significant amendment to The Thinker's initial estimates, based on how long the calculations are taking. We just have to wait and hope the new estimate is an extension to the old one." Dr Wells spoke aloud as she finished instructing the super-computer to re-evaluate Rapture's life expectancy now that Edward had succeeded in shutting down Power and oxygen feeds to most of the southern district. The initial estimate given had been a fifty-percent increase in longevity for Paupers Drop, and if that was now confirmed by The Thinker, they would proceed with a similar programme of district shut-downs across the entire city.

In a stark contrast to the norm, Dr Wells found herself without Edward breathing down her neck, demanding an update at least a dozen times before one was possible. She turned a curious eye to him, and found him silent in deep thought. He was troubled about something.

Edward was still processing his meeting with Jack Ryan, and it had kept his mind churning through most of the afternoon. He was skipping from emotion to emotions, as if he had an insane splicer living in his mind without relent. He'd started off excited by his meeting Jack, and even perhaps a little attracted to the handsome man that so astonishingly resembled Andrew Ryan. That excitement had very quickly been soured with a childish bout of jealousy, that this young stranger had without merit or struggle, a connection to the greatness of Andrew Ryan, the sort of connection that Edward's beloved Sheridan had nearly gone insane trying to get! He'd finally settled back down into a feeling of acceptance that this was Jack Ryan, and only Jack Ryan at that. Neither was Jack giving off any warning signs that he was planning to lay claim to the city - the city that Edward was fighting to control - no, to save! Jack had been in Rapture for little more than a few days before he'd hurried back to the surface with a handful of Tenenbaums freakish little girls, whereas Edward had lived there for over twenty years, he'd committed the most part of his life to Rapture! That thought filled Edward with an inexplicable rage, as he was able to clearly see no intention from Jack to intrude on that.

At that precise moment, as Edward waited for Dr Wells to announce the results from The Thinker's calculations, he was pondering the issue of the ADAM cure Jack claimed to have, and his intention to take all the little sisters, and big sisters, away with him back to the surface. Now _that_ was going to be a problem. What was puzzling Edward in particular, was that he was having to try and deduce where his feelings truly lay. Back when he had been the innocent, starry-eyed boy that he was when he came to Rapture, he knew without a doubt that he would have been all in favor of curing those poor girls. He had always been very dubious about the Plasmid industry and the city-wide introduction of ADAM based products, and he could remember towards the end how badly he had wished it had never been discovered. So that part of him - the younger version of himself, was pleased that a cure had at last been found. Edward had a pleasing vision of this cure being distributed throughout Rapture, and the remaining population returning to a constructive, almost normal existence. He would be able to hand the city back to its population, he could see this as the most direct path to his ultimate goal, the salvation and restoration of his city.

But yet, on the other hand, Edward had lived in the ruins of the once great city for just as long as he had in its glory days, and he wasn't that weak-minded boy any more. He had watched the greedy, stupid citizens of Rapture take a gargantuan shit over the paradise one man had handed them expecting nothing in return. When the people's selfish, blinkered will had been pushed to overtake Ryan's control by the likes of Fontaine and Lamb, they had let the city fall into chaos, and now to the very brink of destruction. A population, such as that of Rapture, had proven itself incapable of responsibly caring for itself. Rapture needed order, and order came from obedience. Obedience came from a desired outcome, or desired reward. What Reward had ever inspired the people of Rapture more than ADAM? It had, regrettably, proven a more manipulative motivator than sex, power or prosperity. Edward wanted to trust the people of Rapture again, but they were in no state yet to be given that trust - there was too much work to be done first. Edward needed the people to get that work done, he needed them to start fixing the lights, fixing the pipework, the heating ducts... and until Edward could re-introduce some form of economy, ADAM was the only reward he could guide the people onward with. Then there were the Big Daddies! Apart from guarding the little sisters that farmed the ADAM, those big, bulky monsters were vital to the exterior works and upkeep required to keep Rapture standing.

"No", Edward muttered to himself. He sat upright in the chair as he came to the sad, depressing conclusion. _For the sake of the people, for the sake of Rapture - my city, the flow of ADAM must resume, and be maintained._ Edward sighed in regret at the temporary suspension of his vision for an ADAM-free Rapture, but he was left with no alternative, it was his only choice - for the sake of the people.

He sighed again and looked upwards to the light as he stretched his aching neck. How badly he wished he didn't have to stand in Jack Ryan's way, but he could see it would be inevitable, unless he could persuade Jack of course, just to wait a while.

"Aha! We have our answer!" Dr Well's cackled with accomplishment, and pulled a long reel of printed paper from the user interface. Edward rose from his seat and walked around the desk to read the results for himself.

"It's near enough, an acceptable margin of error. We achieved a forty-seven percent power supply saving, and will conserve oxygen in Paupers Drop and Skid Row for twice as long as we had originally!" Dr Wells threw out her arms so dynamically Edward feared she was about to throw him a hug. Her unfortunate bodily odor and rotten, yellow teeth made the very idea rather repugnant.

"We have our plan then doctor" Edward announced with confidence. "To save the patient, as I'm sure Dr Steinmann would have concurred, we will continue to severe the dead limbs, and most importantly..." Jack's face flashed before his eyes as he committed to the course he was choosing; "we must keep the cities blood pulsing through its veins."


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Paupers Drop - Sinclair Deluxe**

Jack struggled through the claustrophobic entrance to the Sinclair Deluxe Hotel, clutching his satchel containing the supply of Tenebaums miracle cure. As soon as the people that filled the entrance saw the two Big Sisters tailing Jack, they did their best to swarm to either side and get out of his way, but hundreds can been crammed in tight, many trying to set up make-shift tents anywhere they could clear a spot.

The two Big sisters, or 'Ellie' and 'Beth' as Jack had named them, had lately become more hospitable to him, and the hazed look in their eyes was starting to clear. He'd almost managed a conversation with Ellie on the ride over to the drop in the Atlantic Express carriage, where she had told him she could only clearly remember Dr Sofia Lamb's face, but that everything else, everything she'd done whilst infused with ADAM, was a blur, like a distant nightmare.

They still struck an intimidating picture in their metal exo-skeletons, which Jack intended to free them both from as soon as he had settled in. Jack was again curious about this part of the city that he had never seen - he wondered if it looked this bad for the same reason Fort Frolic and Arcadia did - because of the decade that had passed, but Jack got the impression Paupers Drop had always looked this run down.

Edward had offered Jack accommodation for the duration of his stay in Rapture, and had told him to seek out Grace Holloway on the top floor of the Sinclair Deluxe, who would put him and his two sisters up in her private apartment. Jack guessed Grace Holloway had to be a close confident and supporter of Edward Carson, to be afforded her own apartment still, when so many others were being forced to sleep in the hallways, bathrooms and even the maintenance shafts.

With the elevator car sat smashed at the bottom of its cage, the trio began the ascent up through the long corridors that ran through the center of the building. At first, Jack was impressed to see splicers working in an almost uniformed fashion, atop small ladders installing hanging lanterns throughout the corridors where the main lighting had failed. If it wasn't for their grotesquely morphed faces, dis-proportioned limbs and the occasional giggling, they could have almost been normal people. They were climbing the small side set of stairs to the third level, when Jack overheard one speaking to a woman that was drunkenly hanging out of her doorway.

"I gotta get these lights up doll, otherwise I'd be in there in a flash, give you a good seeing too! But the guv'nor says these lights gotta be up in an hour - otherwise its no ADAM." The man swiftly returned to his wiring, ignoring the woman's further attempts to solicit him. Jack was curious as to what the splicer had meant - were they being paid with ADAM to do this work? If so, how? Rapture's supply of little sisters was in dire desperation, hence why Sofia Lamb had apparently been abducting them from the surface, and Tenenbaum had suggested that fresh ADAM hadn't been produced in years with the fall of Sinclair Solutions and Fontaine Futuristics.

His trail of thought was swept aside when he began passing through the many rooms that were missing walls or doors altogether, and Jack could see the true conditions that these people were being forced into. Everything was soaking wet or rotten, walls ran with fresh seawater from leaks overhead, and the air was thick with every foul stench imaginable, from urine and feaces, to blood and mould. He understood Edward's intentions, to keep everyone in a well-powered and supplied area whilst cutting off other areas to conserve power, but nevertheless, these conditions were deplorable. He still could not fathom how Edward, and those now choosing to support him as their leader, would choose a life such as this over an attempt to evacuate to the surface.

Finally they turned the final corner, and stepping over a few sleeping splicers on mattresses and double-folded blankets, Jack, Ellie and Beth reached the large door that bore the name 'Grace Holloway'.

After a rap on the door and a few seconds, the door began to awkwardly slide open, groaning under its own weight, it's gears grinding and jerking. Grace Holloway stood at a strange angle, leaning down onto her cane, dressed in a filthy gold skirt and blouse. Her face was slightly sagged, but not from ADAM use, but natural age and a touch of sadness. Her eyes looked up at him from drooped, sunken sockets like those of a basset hound, with no expectations other than some form of disappointment yet to present itself. Jack smiled, and instantly felt some level of pity. Again, this fragile old woman did not belong here, left to sleep under damp blankets and breath in the mould growing up the walls of her apartment.

"Well, well... a real life celebrity comes knocking at my door!" Grace welcomed his with as much enthusiasm as her aged frame would allow. "You probably wouldn't even believe have the things folk 'round here say 'bout you." She carried on as she stepped back out of his way. She looked over his shoulder at the two Big sisters, their helmets dis-guarded, and smiled at them both. They were different girls certainly, but how they made her think of little Eleanor Lamb.

"Come on in girls, you are most welcome in here." She lifted her hand that held the cane and gestured for them all to enter. Once the front door had closed again and shut them all inside, Jack turned to his elderly host.

"You must forgive me, Mrs Holloway, but I'm not well acquainted with this part of Rapture, nor have it yet had the pleasure of hearing about you." Jack smiled.

Grace chuckled, won over by his charm that was clearly a sign of being a surface dweller. "Well son, first off let's call a halt to that 'Mrs' business - I'm a Miss, always have been thank the Lord. You can call me Grace. Now I know you're Ryan's blood, but seein' how you put the old fella' down, I'm guessing you didn't hold much affection for him?" Her mouth spoke like the rapid fire of a machine gun.

Getting the feeling he was being tested, Jack chose again to remain as neutral as he could. "There's more to that story than you may have been told, but lets agree that I won't be starting the old boy's fan club up any time soon."

Grace smiled at that answer, and slung her arm around Jacks for support, guiding him then across the swollen, uneven floor to the grimy window. "I don't deny that I was misguided by Sofia Lamb - but I stand by my conviction in despising Ryan. I did all I could to bring that man down, and I'd sure as hell do it again. But seein' as he's still your kin, we'll draw the line on Ryan at that, if you prefer." She stopped when they were a foot from the glass. From there, they could look down into the glass entrance tunnels that fed through to the hotel entrance from the Fishbowl Diner, each now crowded to capacity with refugee's from the cities Southern district.

"Forgive me for being so blunt, Grace, but I feel I have to ask this question to someone other than Mr Carson. Why do you all stay down here? Why don't you make a break for the surface now that Dr Lamb has gone?" Jack hoped jumping her with the question may illicit a truthful answer.

"You may be asking the wrong person in me kid, but I'll tell you why that is. I gave up everything on the surface when I came down here, there's nothing for me up there waiting for me, except the poor house. So the effort really isn't worth it for an old girl like Gracey - I'd probably die sooner tryin' than if I wait for the sea to take me down here."

Jack nodded in sympathetic understanding, again feeling sympathy for her. "So it's not out of some heart-felt loyalty to Edward Carson? Or whats left of the Rapture Family?" Grace turned to face him, with an upturned eyebrow and accusing eyes. "You testing the water here boy?"

Jack didn't answer - he didn't know how to climb out of the whole he'd just dug, and he wanted to see if she'd still reply.

"I'm not loyal to anyone down here anymore - I've been burned too bad by too many. I've known Edward for a good few years, a tortured soul who got a tough break down here, but he's always meant well. But lately... I'm not sure what's going on in his head." She let her gaze drift out the window.

"I assumed you two were close, considering he's left you this whole apartment to yourself? and trusted you to keep an eye on me!" Jack tried to sound as though he was joking.

"I'm probably the closest person to him, but that doesn't mean I'm in his good books. I refused to give him my complete endorsement ya'see. Sure he's not forcin' me to take people in to my home, but even that's probably more out of guilt than generosity. I heard he's re-opening Mercury Suites next, as the next 'safe habitat zone'. He's been offering it to any of the survivin' toff's that will pledge him their support. I didn't even make it onto the list to be considered for one of those swanky digs..." She took out a Nico-time cigarette and lit up, chuckling as she exhaled the first puff of smoke. "Not that I'd want one - this is my home. But it's always nice to be asked!" She cackled slightly, and walked over to the two girls stood quietly in the corner.

"Going back to your question... some folk have tried to get back up top side. Tried and failed. Lamb saw to it that every bathysphere was locked down. Most don't even work anymore. I heard some of the boys holed up in the 'Rapture Tribune' offices tried to boost a radio signal out to the surface, shortly before they were jumped by a gang of splicers." Without a word, Grace placed her hands on Beths arms, and gently guided the girl down into an armchair.

"Jack son, this is Rapture. Whatever it is you're after doin', you should know better than most, it's never going to be a walk in Arcadia. If Edward is still the boy I knew, then you may find an ally in him if you play your cards right. But he's been mighty restless lately, just be careful."


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Olympus Heights - Mercury Suites**

It was certainly a peculiar sensation to be back. When Jack had fought his way through Mercury Suites eight years ago in search of Frank Fontaine's apartment, it had literally been a war zone, a violent battleground between Big Daddies and spliced up security guards. But as he entered from the tramway, it was immediately apparent that a steady clean-up operation was underway, much like what he'd seen back down in Paupers Drop. Except here, rather than hanging up emergency lamps and finding new nooks and holes to cram people in to, the misshapen workers were sweeping the marble floors clear of dust and debris, and tending to the plants! He even saw one women, dressed in a torn frock and laddered stockings, stitching up one of the old Ryan propaganda banners ready for it to be re-hung.

Jack laughed to himself, but not in a pleasant way. There was considerably more floor space, and better living conditions in Mercury Suites, despite the decades worth of damage, than back in the Sinclaire Deluxe and surrounding ghetto, yet none of the poor devils down there had been transferred here. It appeared, he hoped incorrectly, as though Edward was feathering a nice little nest for a chosen few, including himself.

Jack tried to settle his mind down as he took the working elevator up to the top floor. He'd let himself become emotionally invested in Rapture's affairs during his last time here, and as a result the city had chewed him up and spat him back out. He repeated over and over to himself that he was here for one reason - to offer the ADAM cure out to those that wanted it, and rescue the sisters. If it wasn't for that single mission, he wouldn't have even come to Rapture, and all of this would have transpired anyway. He kept telling himself that, against the nagging of his conscience.

The smell that hand lingered thick through the cities halls seemed less intense for the first time, most of the bodies appeared to have been cleared out, and a fresh breeze indicated the air conditioning system was working at peak capacity.

A spritely bell announced that the elevator had arrived, and Jack stepped out into a handsome vestibule, with a balcony that overlooked the Mercury Suites atrium. The floors had even been scrubbed and polished up here, and the original light fixtures repaired. Jack shook his head in disapproval, and walking past the large splicer Boxer and a second he didn't know, both guarding the front door, Jack rang the bell.

**Olympus Heights - Mercury Suites - Penthouse of Lord Sheridan Fortesque and Edward Carson**

Edward hung up the phone from the Adonis Resort, where his expedition team had confirmed it clear and ready for immediate shut down. In a few minutes, he hoped to recieve the same news from Dionysus Park - not that that dump would be any great loss. He had a small headache brewing, had done ever since he'd had to direct a Big Sister into Point Prometheus to break-up the first splicer gang to try and take ADAM by force. The gradual distribution of ADAM from the small amount they'd so far produced had gone too well he supposed, as was due its first bump in the road. It had only cost one scientist and three splicers, which compared to the rate of progress he had the city moving too now, that was still a bargain. He had been right to pursue the production of more ADAM, the response from the spliced up workforce had been fantastic, they worked like automaton's simply on a promise of getting the ADAM eventually.

Edward stepped away from the phone, and looked into the mirror beside it. It was smashed, but still looked much better re-hung that sprawled across the floor, and the few large shards let him pull his shirt straight and dust off the jacket he had retrieved from the ruins of his old wardrobe. He was ecstatic to be back in his old home, and with the help of a small legion of his new found loyal workforce he had cleared it of all the rubble, bodies and shit the squatting splicers had littered it with. It still was no more than a shadow of its former self, but it was home. He hoped, in time, he could restore it - both for his sake, and the memory of the man that had shared it with him in the first place.

The doorbell rang, and feeling the butterflies in his stomach again, Edward made for the front door. He found himself hoping that Jack would be impressed with the refreshed look of Mercury Suites, and that they could perhaps enjoy a friendly conversation over a glass of Arcadia Merlot. He giggled at his little indiscretion, having sent a splicer down to the partially flooded Worley Winery, just to retrieve him a couple of cases of the '58 Vintage he knew Worley had stashed away down there before the war. That first splicer hadn't come back, but the second had succeeded, just in time for Jack's acceptance of Edwards invite to spend the evening with him - that had been a relief!

Edward opened the door to Jack, and flushed slightly when he realized for the second time how handsome Jack Ryan actually was. Jack was probably as handsome if not more so than Andrew Ryan would have been at that age, which he guessed to be around thirty five now, or just over. The pair exchanged pleasantries, and both acknowledged how alien such motions felt, in a part of Rapture where only a few weeks ago, you'd have simply shot the first sign of life you came across. Jack explained how he had remembered Mercury Suites, and that it had been were he'd put an end to Sander Cohen.

"Well I owe you for that one. That old bastard had plenty to answer for, nearly had his way with me if wasn't for you." Edward patted Jack on the shoulder and led him to one of two large armchairs he'd placed beside the fireplace. "Let me pour you some wine?" He cheerily announced as he picked up the wine bottle from the one remaining shelf in the cabinet. "It's a 1958 Arcadia Merlot - the last great vintage before the tight son of a bitch started watering it down." Edward explained, remembering how Sheridan had taken one sip of the latter 1959 vintage and had spat it straight out.

Jack watched the man's nervous but polite little display, and found it confused him even more. He really couldn't make up his mind yet about Edward.

"So I see the work you're having down on Mercury Suites..." He began, to an excited gleam in reply from Edward. "When will you start moving people in here? I bet they can't wait to get away from Paupers Drop..." he threw the bait, and waited to see what he would catch. Edward's face instantly dropped, but he composed himself quickly.

"Paupers Drop has always been like that, they kept it a shit hole even before Rapture went to hell. They had every chance to improve things for themselves down there back then, so I don't think they can complain too much about it for the time being. At least I'm keeping them alive!" Edward cheered as he finished pouring Jack's wine and handed it to him. "Besides, there are still quite a few parts of the city I think we're going to have to sacrifice, and that will undoubtedly mean moving hundreds more into these few safe zones. I need to keep room in Olympus Heights for the next wave of refugee's."

Their eyes met in an awkward, silent moment. Jack was trying to deduce if Edward believed these excuses he was giving. Edward was trying to decide whether Jack was pushing some sort of agenda. Edward broke the stalemate. "I know what its like to live in squalor, I was born into it. I've tasted desperate. Trust me, I don't wish it upon anyone, not even my worst enemy. I'm not re-building Mercury Suites just to satisfy some elitist ego, I'm building it as an incentive."

Jack nodded to indicate he was listening, as he took a sip of the wine.

"So what do the people of Rapture currently run on? ADAM." Edward concluded, watching for Jack's reaction. " _BOTH_ you and I want to see an end to that. We _both_ want to see the addiction cured. But without ADAM, I need the people of Rapture to have something to work towards, like they did back in the 50's - ambition, success, wealth! The very founding principles of Rapture!"

Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow. "But it was that philosophy that brought Ryan down... it did't work."

"No... traitors brought Ryan down, selfish, corrupt parasites brought Ryan down. The city worked for over ten years before Fontaine began corrupting the city and turning it against Ryan. If these people are to now work together to rebuild, I need an economy. So when I start withdrawing the ADAM, what will keep those splicers you saw outside sweeping the streets, repainting and repairing the electric systems? Ambition. They will aspire to move themselves up from the poverty of Paupers Drop, and _work_ their way to the top. The sweat of their brow will earn them a place in Olympus Heights, maybe even Mercury Suites for some of them." Edward was proud of his little speech. He hoped Jack has caught on to the fact he was showing an intention to one day break the ADAM cycle.

"So... you are paying these poor devils with ADAM?" Jack asked, trying to hide the doubtful tone in the question.

Edward sighed, and Jack could see his disappointment at the question. "Of course I am, but only in very, very small doses, I'm not drowning the poor buggers with it. There's a small supply left up in Point Prometheus, so I'm using that up and getting the basic life-support systems back up and running at the same time - its a temporary, necessary evil my friend."

Jack was partially relieved, at least Edward wasn't producing any fresh ADAM. That would mean a reprieve for the little sisters, and was a step closer to the eradication of the addiction. "I'm glad to hear that at least, that you don't intend to make any more."

Edward blinked, and tried not to let his face flush red as he accepted the lie he had told, and his mind began to race with plans on how to make sure Jack didn't find out about the fresh production he had already sanctioned.

"You have my word, Jack. Give me time, let me get Rapture on its feet. Then I will offer you all the help I can in getting your cure to everyone that needs it."

The pair raised their glasses in a toast, and drank, never once breaking eye contact. The die had been cast.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

**Olympus Heights - Mercury Suites**

Edward was rolling the small block of ice that he'd conjured up with a short shot of Winter Blast from his index finger around the bottom of his glass, as he listened to Jack's description of what had transpired up on the surface since 1946, when Edward and thousands of others had abandoned the surface world for Rapture. He was intrigued certainly, but neither did he find himself regretting his decision. From the way Jack was talking, Edward was convinced that this was as much propaganda as it was truth. In fact, ever since he had made it clear to Jack that it was his intention to rebuild Rapture rather than abandon it, the poor chap seemed to have been more intent than ever to persuade him otherwise.

Edward studied Jack as he continued on, recounting the wondrous achievements of the USA, most of which still paled in comparison to the accomplishments of Rapture twenty years ago. He wondered how hard it was going to be to keep information from Jack Ryan - in theory it should be perfectly simple, as Edward had by some miracle been able to establish control over most of the city now via the 'Thinker', yet it was perhaps the most famous Rapture legend that told of Jack Ryan's uncovering of conspiracies and toppling of Andrew Ryan, Sander Cohen and even Frank Fontaine in the space of a few short days. How would Jack Ryan behave this time around - how would he react if he found out that Edward had lied about farming the sea floor for fresh Sea Slugs, and re-starting ADAM production?

Edward tried to calm his racing mind by reminding himself that Jack Ryan was but one man, and that already he had sacrificed considerably more than one man to get Rapture breathing again, so if push came to shove, one more life would be a small price to pay. Yet he was all too aware of the reputation Jack Ryan carried, despite all of Edwards hard work, many of the surviving citizens in the city would undoubtedly devote allegiance to the legend of Jack Ryan, than to him. Neither could he ignore the symbolism of Jack Ryan's two pets, his 'cured' Big Sisters, stood staring down his own bodyguards just outside the front door at that very moment. He feared that was a sign of things to come.

Looking into Jack's eyes, he was both aggravated and warmed by how much Jack still seemed to care about his late fathers city, and the people that lived there. Despite the awkwardness it was going to present for Edward, it made him even more of an attractive man to behold, mirroring a tenacity and drive that Edward had seen once before, in his beloved Sheridan Ambrose.

They were both torn from their line of thought by the ring of the telephone. Edward smiled politely at Jack and excused himself, walking across to the phone beside the large windows overlooking the city below.

"Alright Guv, it's Bear here... we've got an issue down at Dionysus Park. There's a bunch of Rapture Family squatters down here, they rolled a Big Daddy somehow and now they're off their tits on the ADAM he'd been carrying." Edward pictured Bear - an oily ex-fisherman that had been one of the very first to rally to his cause. He let out an irritated sigh aloud intended for Bear, but then quickly darted his eyes around to see just how much attention Jack was paying to what was said.

"I understand..." Edward began.

"If we don't clear this mob out in a few hours, that filly down in Minerva's Den has said we'll have to flood Fort Frolic instead. Just so's ya know" Bear coughed casually down the phone. Edward hesitated, he really didn't want to loose Fort Frolic. He'd been dreaming of the day soon when he could re-open it, and watch it come back to life with lavish shops and exciting stage shows. He'd even pictured the crowds cheering as he, the saviour of Rapture, sailed down the stairs in a crisp Tuxedo, before he addressed the begging audience on the stage of Fleet Hall.

He knew he could trust Bear to stay level headed - he'd been the one to arrange the eradication of the splicers up in Point Prometheus, so he wouldn't flinch whatever order Edward gave.

Edward was careful to use generic words that wouldn't give Jack any clues as to what was happening. If it happened whilst Jack was there with him, he was confident he could probably keep him from ever finding out.

"Ok Bear, you have my permission to carry on as originally planned." He tried to put on a cheerful, casual tone, to prevent any suspicion from Jack, sat quietly just a few feet away. "No need to resort to Dr Well's alternative".

"Right you are guv', these bastards put that queen bitch Lamb on the throne, I reckon' they deserve a little bit of a watering' down in recompense! I'll see that its done." Bear confirmed, and hung up the phone. Smiling, Edward gestured to the decanter on the sideboard. "Jack my friend, another glass of wine?"


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

**Atlantic Express Car 264 - En-route to Dionysus Park**

Grace Holloway held up her aged frame by leaning forward on the control console of the Atlantic Express carriage, her right arm laying her weight down on the accelerator lever that was positioned forward at full throttle.

She'd been volunteering that morning at the Pauper's Drop station, welcoming and guiding the handfuls of evacuee's from the Adonis Resort. She'd meanwhile overheard one of Edward's splicers, a burly, shady Brit by the nickname of 'Bear', picking a few men to follow him down to Dionysus Park to clear it out. She took that to mean Edward's economy cuts had been expanded to include Dr Sofia Lamb's former home, and that it was soon to be returned to the sea.

Grace's loyalty to Dr Lamb had been shaken and ultimately broken, but that hadn't mean she didn't still have a great number of very dear friends that had been or still were part of the Rapture Family, many of whom she had spent many hours and days speaking with, dining with, even singing with. One such friend had been Melissa Bailey - a darling little black girl that had been nearly as dear to her as little Eleanor Lamb, the two of them had even played tea time with dolls sat on Grace's living room carpet more than once. It had broken Grace's heart to watch little Melisaa grow to be twisted and warped by the insanity of the splicers that surrounded her, leading inevitably to her own ADAM addiction.

Grace's standing in the Rapture family had helped her protect Melissa from Dr Gil Alexander and Dr Lamb's Big Sister program, but the poor girl had still not been much better off out in the open.

The last Grace had heard of her, she'd refused to renounce Dr Lamb's teachings despite the Doctor's apparent abandonment to the surface. After it was pumped dry, she and a few of the other die-hard believers had gone on a pilgrimage to the great Dr Lamb's temple, Dionysus Park, to be as close to her as possible. After hearing Bear and his goons arranging to travel down there, Grace had waited anxiously for an Express Carriage to arrive with whoever they'd rounded up down in the Park - but it had never come. How she'd desperately waited to see little Melissa's face appear through the glass of the carriage window each time one had arrived, even if she had been bound in chains.

Finally, when the klaxon had sounded marking thirty minutes until the Adonis Resort's pumps, power and air supply were shut down, Grace had been left with little choice but to assume it marked the same for Dionysus Park. She could have tried to contact Edward, she didn't doubt he'd at least take her call - but by the time they'd debated it to whatever answer he gave her, it would have been too late to do anything, either way. Grace had thrown down her walking stick and marched straight passed the giggling gang of splicers that had been tasked with maintaining order in the station, and had locked herself in the waiting carriage's control compartment. The morons had crowed and screamed as she'd powered the car up and opened the bulkhead doors, one had even tried to smash through the glass with a fish hook. But ultimately, her determination had seen to it that she single-mindedly drove Atlantic Express Car 264 away from the platform, and following its track, sank it down into the sea. Once submerged, the car was able to travel much faster, only having to slow to pass through three further stations en-route.

Grace hadn't been back to Dionysus Park in years, and not once since it had been drained and re-opened a short while ago. Pulling into the station, her heart sank at the state she found it in. The floors deep in sediment and the walls and overhead glass canopies thick with grime and dirt. When Dr Lamb had first opened it, oh how beautiful it had been! One of the most glamorous places in all of Rapture!

Stepping out of the Express Carriage onto the platform, she grimaced at the squelch underfoot, and her first few awkward steps without her cane had been slow and cautious. Yet quickly she had remembered that she only had a short time left - less than fifteen minutes probably now by her count. Somewhere in the far distance she could hear Bear barking orders at his men, telling them to "finish up" and "get the hell out". Grace swiftly forgave the muddy floor and moved as quickly as she could, hunched awkwardly and in pain without her cane, making for the main entrance.

Grace had climbed the stairs and reached the Carousel Atrium, when suddenly she heard one of the brutes helping Bear shriek with delight "I've got it boss! That's the back up system shut down." Grace cursed under her breath "Damn it... damn!" She spat, her fear that the park was truly being shut down realized. Quickly stopping to rest against one of the wooden horses on the carousel, Grace gave her throbbing knee's a hard finger massage, able to poke most of her hand through the holes in her tights. Looking around, Grace realised that she had no idea where to start looking, and let out a subtle cry and whimper. "Oh Melissa, where are you honey?" She gasped aloud.

As if in a taunting response, the primary lights suddenly shut down, followed by the mechanical, grinding whirring of the many electric dynamo's throughout Dionysus Park as each began to slow to a halt. As designed, the parks handful of working back-up batteries kicked in, giving Grace just enough light to see across the room in either direction - back the way she came, or onward, deeper into the park.


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**Minerva's Den - Office of Dr Lydia Wells**

Dr Wells sat by her desk, her chair span out to one side, with her head in her hands. She was trying to shake this strange sensation she'd been having lately - she had no other explanation for what was happening to her other than an attack of conscience, which was not something that had troubled her for quite a number of years.

When Rapture had been in bloom, there had been councils, committee's and thousands of people to preserve the city, and the safety of those that lived there. Lydia Wells had never needed to worry about such things, and had therefore never really cared for anybody - that had been convenient. It had let her engross herself in her work, devote herself to the work assigned to her by Dr Reed Wahl, and the personal program experiments and projects that Dr Charles M. Porter had given her permission to indulge.

When the war had torn through the city, equally everyone involved had been responsible for themselves, and Dr Wells had been given the sole objective to help keep Rapture Central Computing operational and able to run the cities automation. Neither Ryan or Fontaine, or even Sofia Lamb, had ever dared to interfere with the workings inside Minerva's Den, for fear of loosing the Thinker's ability to run the underwater city automatically, whereas it would otherwise require a small army of stable-minded, intelligent engineers to take its place.

When the city had eventually gone silent, all but dead, Dr Wells had of course opted to console her terrified, lonely mind with an excessive stream of ADAM. She'd lost entire days, sat on the floor of the Thinker's control room or curled up somewhere in the pit beneath the main computer, high as a kite.

Now, however, Edward Carson had bestowed upon her the responsibility of running Rapture's automation. She had unwittingly accepted, her judgement impaired both by her drug habit and her obsession with her beloved computer. Regardless of the road and choices that had landed her there, Lydia now accepted she was responsible for Rapture, and that her actions directly affected everyone still alive down here on the ocean floor. Edward had helped ease the burden by reminding her that she was saving thousands of lives, and yet it wasn't those saved that were always on her mind, but those that they had sacrificed - so many already! She had never considered herself a sociable, people person, and for a short time after the first loss of life in the Ryan Amusements Park, had convinced herself, as Edward had confirmed, that those deaths at their hands had been essentially unavoidable, and necessary to save everyone else.

But she had been sure that was to be the only incident of its kind. But since then, she had watched as more and more had died. When a handful of men had been boiled alive working on the Geothermal Control system, only the other ten or so men nearby had really known about it. When Edward's Big Sister's had stormed Point Prometheus and slain over twenty rioting splicers - only the surviving, grateful scientists there had really known about it. Equally, there had been a number of fatal incidents over the last few days, each fairly contained. Second to Edward, only Lydia had the access and ability to put all of these smaller incidents together and paint the bigger picture for herself - Edwards endeavors were killing scores of men - splicers admittedly, but still the men and women he was professing he was trying to save. She found herself wishing there was an alternative, another way to save everyone without killing half of them in order to it.

She now found herself in the same situation again - Edward had authorized Bear, and by default directly instructed Lydia, to shut down all life support systems to Dionysus Park, knowing there were still people inside. When Bear had called through and told her, he'd compared it to the situation in Ryan Amusements - for the greater good. But that had been very different - Edward had acted back then to preserve power to Arcadia, which would have been put at marginal risk had he not let the amusement park flood. This time, the risk was only that they would have change the area of the city they were going to sacrifice - Dionysus Park would have been swapped for Fort Frolic - an already part-flooded building that they already knew to be entirely empty. She couldn't think of any justifiable reason for Edward to sacrifice people again this time.

Wiping her tired eyes and sitting up, she tried to clear her mind from all the busy thoughts rushing through it, listening to the faint 'glug-glug' of the water outside her window.

"Thinker..." She gently spoke aloud to begin an enquiry...

"Yes, Doctor Lydia Wells. Ready for Query..." The monotone, electrical voice confirmed.

"Progress update for District Shut down 4" she stretched her aching neck as she vocally input her question.

"Main power had been disconnected. Main and secondary Water pumps disconnected. Air Intake fans for Adonis Resort - Dionysus Park - Triton Tower - Mason's Quarter, shut down. Beginning Intake fans reverse cycle in five minutes - zero oxygen level in ten minutes." Lydia shook her head, without main power the poor souls trapped down there would be in the dark by now, or would at most be on emergency battery lighting only. By the 'Thinker's time scale, they would probably all suffocate long before the water would start to flow back in. She tried to imagine in her mind which she considered to be worse - suffocating or drowning. She tried to relieve some of her guilt by choosing that she'd rather let them suffocate in the dry, than to drown in freezing water, but she could see through her own self-deception.

"Who knew old girl - you have a heart after all." She muttered, reluctantly looking back to the Security Camera feed from Dionysus Park. She was looking at ten nearly all-black screens, with the lights out she could see very little. Hopelessly looking deep into the darkness, she suddenly saw movement, a bright figure awkwardly limping across one of the screens. She felt a pull in the pit of her stomach, assuming this had to be one of the spliced-up religious nuts that had refused to leave. As the woman literally pushing the button on this poor person's demise, Lydia felt she owed it to them to watch for as long as they were in view. She pushed her thick glasses back up her nose, and leant forward. The woman in view suddenly stopped, and looked straight up at the camera.

Dr Well's froze, forgetting for a moment that the person could not see her back - yet the woman in shot continued to look at the camera, fixated on it, exactly as if she could indeed see through the feed to Lydia, the woman that was orchestrating the events that would result in this woman's death.

As she watched, Lydia wells began to realize she recognized the face - it was an older woman, a colored woman, wearing a worn but once smart two piece suit and hat. She kept trying to place the face, until long after the old woman had hobbled on out of view - from the direction she was taking, it seemed to Lydia the woman was heading towards the Triton Cinema.

"Poor old soul..." She murmured, thinking how the woman didn't look to be crazed up on ADAM like Bear had said they were down there, if anything the woman's face was so clear and properly formed that it indicated she had never touched a drop of ADAM in her life.

Not knowing what out of everything she was hearing was truth or not anymore, Dr Wells reclined in her office chair, and returned to her wishing, that there was another way to save the people of Rapture, and her beloved 'Thinker' at the same time.


	28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

**Dionysus Park - Triton Cinema**

Grace cursed her old, aching bones as she slipped repeatedly on the dirty marble floor. Her tired eyes were aching too, straining to look ahead through the dark hallway that led up to the Triton Cinema. She couldn't make anyone out, but she had seen some shadows and heard whispers up in that direction, and since Bear and his crew had made good their escape from the doomed Dionysus Park, it was a safe bet the shadows Grace was chasing would lead her to Melissa.

The silence seemed deeper than ever now - nobody in Rapture ever really noticed that ever-present hum that came from the air vents and oxygen pumps. But they had clearly now stopped, not one could be heard throughout Dionysus Park, and Grace new that had to signal the beginning of the end.

" _Oh no you don't, you bastard! Take this!_ " A splicer crowed up ahead, and Grace heard what sounded like a storm of electricity being cast - perhaps a fistful of Electroshock?

" _Start! Start! Why won't it start?_ " A woman screamed hysterically, a young woman clearly hyped up on ADAM. Grace gasped with relief at the voice - " _Melissa! Honey!_ " She said aloud, and pushed her painful knees to move even faster towards the Triton's entrance.

Suddenly, from all around, the air vents began to rumble loudly and awkwardly, a straining sound that Grace had never heard them make before. Had somebody turned them back on? Were they saved? For a fleeting moment, she let her heart dream that she had been wrong about Edward, and that upon hearing of people still alive down in Dionysus Park, he had demanded the oxygen be resupplied and the shut down postponed. How she hoped that was the case, and that her creeping doubts about his mental stability and motivation had been wrong.

Spurred on by hope, Grace ventured through beneath the Cinema entrance canopy and down into the foyer. Her heart leapt when through the gloom, she caught sight of a small group, crouched beside a large gaping hole they had torn through the wall. They had located one of the large dynamo's and control circuits that controlled the air intake system for the Triton Cinema, and one man, cursing and spitting with frustration, was pulling at the wiring and occasionally pulsing a bolt of Electroshock into the machine with his index finger.

As Grace struggled to see if Melissa was one of the crowd, she found herself struggling for breath a little harder than before. Her breaths had to be deeper, and she could feel her chest straining. Before she could panic too much that a heart attack was imminent, a young, dark-skinned splicer rose from the group;

"Those rotten bloody bastards! Leavin' us to die!"

Grace held a hand against her chest, overwhelmed with relief. " _Melissa! Darlin'! It's Aunt Gracey!"_ The Young girl squinted through the emergency lighting to the crooked, frail figure leaning against the wall up ahead. She didn't smile or run up for a hug as she'd done when she was smaller, but rather took a careful step or too closer, and frowned. " _You daffy old broad! What are you doing down here? Don't you know that Carson fucker is trying to drown us all down here? You need to get out now!_ " She screeched, waving her arms above her head. The years of ADAM abuse had sunk her face back into her own skull slightly, and her jaw was sagging so low it appeared to have come away entirely, but still there was a faint, concerned twinkle in the young woman's eyes that confirmed for Grace this was still her little Melissa.

" _No honey, listen... the fans are back on, they're giving us air again!"_ Grace pictured Edward up wherever he was, perhaps in his new Hephaestus Office or Minerva's Den, barking brave orders to save everyone still trapped down in the Park.

Melissa stormed from her group up towards Grace. " _The Fan's aren't back on you stupid woman! They've reversed them! They are sucking all the oxygen out, that's what we can't breath! Sucking out all the air to keep for themselves!"_

Grace's face dropped, and gasped slightly, but not from shock, but her first struggle to breath. Melissa pointed with the wrench she was clutching to the whole in the wall that her companions were clambering through. " _But we won't sacrifice Dr Lamb's temple! We will not abandon her Eden here on earth! We have jammed this intake fan, we are trying to steal our oxygen back from them!"_

Grace watched the crazed splicers fumbling at the machine, so spliced up that they couldn't possibly know what they were doing. " _Melissa baby, Dr Lamb is gone - she scooted on outta here without a thought for the rest of us. You can't save the Park - come with me now, we may still be able to get out! I have an Express car waitin' at the station!"_

The young girl tore her hand away as Grace tried to take it; "I love you Aunt Gracey, but I won't believe the great Lamb would abandon us willingly! She has been ripped away from us, we are being tested! We must remain loyal and strong until her return! We must preserve the temple of the Lamb!" The girl shrieked as she lept into the air, flipping backwards mid-flight before landing back beside the group of splicers.

Grace said nothing, but began to weep, for the sweet, clear minded young girl Melissa had once been, and for the fate for them both that now seemed inevitable.

The first loud crashes began, as one by one, vent covers and access hatches were blown from their fittings by the build up of seawater in the underfloor spaces. Having been flooded once, the Park was full of leaks, and without the pumps, the water was already rising fast. As Grace stood and watched the young girl, the second she had failed to protect, she quietly sobbed, and barely flinched when the freezing water began to flow between her feet.


	29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

**Minerva's Den**

Edward was deep in thought as he strode through the entrance lobby of Minerva's Den, past the robotic receptionist who was gradually sounding less and less human and more like a rusty toaster. Having retrieved a pair of his favorite brogues from his wardrobe, Edward was careful to dodgy the many puddles that were scattered across the carpet from the leaking canopy overhead. _'Mental note - task a Big Daddy to prioritize repairs to Minerva's Den Windows asap'_ he told himself.

He had enjoyed his time that evening with Jack Ryan, and he felt he'd made a little headway in convincing Jack that he wasn't just yet another tyrant looking to plunder Rapture for his own gain. Yet, he had felt great concern when he had bid farewell to his guest and simply let him go free, back out into the city. If Jack proved as curious and resourceful as he had been back in 1960, then it was still very plausible that he'd stumble upon the fresh supplies of ADAM shipping out of Point Prometheus, or it was simply a matter of time before the population would be openly discussing the ADAM they were being promised in return for the work they were put to by Edward and his growing group of followers.

Edward sighed, and knew he would have to start limiting Jack's access within Rapture, but that action alone would raise Jack's suspicion of him - he was certain of it. If only he could persuade Jack to leave Rapture for a while, and to return in a few years? Maybe the city would be in a much better position to entertain the eradication of ADAM use in a few more years. But if Jack had been coerced into returning by that bloody bitch Tenenbaum, it stood to reason she would have something else to say about it if Jack did leave without all those little girls in tow.

Edward stopped, and turned to face both 'Boxer' and 'Bear', who had taken to following him around on his errands like two doberman. Bear still looked flustered from his rushed exit from Dionysus Park, and was clearly keen to get to Minerva's Den so he could see the job through to the end.

"Boxer..." Edward looked up at the giant man that towered over him. He still felt a small measure of anxiety giving instructions to such a massive brute, but Boxer had sought him out after his speech on High Street, and willingly offered his assistance. Boxer had made a point that he was not an academically intelligent man, but that he wanted to put himself to whatever use he could in saving Rapture. That ideology had somehow made the man comfortable in taking instruction from a nearing middle-aged poof.

"As ever, I ask a lot of you my friend, but I need you to help me contain Jack Ryan." Boxer seemed surprised by the order, but not upset by it. "Jack Ryan? I thought you two were becoming fast friends? Won't having Andrew Ryan's son on the team only make our job easier?" He grumbled.

"Yes it will Boxer, and don't misunderstand me, I don't wish any ill treatment towards him. But he's unfortunately lacking some of his father's vision - he wouldn't understand some of the things we have to do to save this great city. If we upset him, by letting him get wind that I've been sending out Big Daddies to harvest sea slugs again, or that we've almost established full-scaled ADAM production in Point Prometheus, he could equally cause us as much trouble as aid his name could ever give our cause."

"Ok, I'm wiv' ya. Keep his eyes away from the ADAM, and his ears closed to the gossip." Edward smiled in confirmation, and Boxer span on his heels and marched off back towards the Bathysphere station, taking with him his own small gang of loyal thugs.

Edward and Bear continued on through Minerva's Den towards Dr Well's office. They barely made it through the door before Lydia Wells launched a wail of despair at him. "I've realised who she is! Oh my god! I've rememered...!"

Edward took hold of the crying woman by her arms and held her steady. "What are you talking about? Realized what about who?" Edward bit back, irritably. He'd been growing less and less patient with the eccentric Dr Wells' episodes lately. She tore her right arm free from his grip and pointed to one of her security camera feeds.

As Edward followed her pointed finger, at first all he and Bear could make out were darkened rooms flooding with seawater, maelstrom's of ocean teaming with broken furniture and long-deceased corpses. "What am I supposed to be looking at? All looks to be as planned?" Edward whined, looking back to the Doctor.

"Camera 56! It's Grace Holloway! She's down there in Dionysus Park!" Edwards eye's opened as large as saucers, and dropped Lydia Wells to the floor as he pushed passed and looked closely. Amongst the commotion of the flood and the grain of the camera feed, he could make out two figures fighting up the back stairwell of the Triton Cinema against the rushing water. One, the leading figure was a young woman, a splicer - who was fighting to drag along behind her the struggling, weak frame of Grace Holloway.

"Fuck! Fuck!" Edward screamed as he brought a clenched fist down against the desk. "What the fuck is she doing down there?" Edward spat a little as he cried aloud at the others in the room. "Bear! I told you to clear the Park out before we flooded it!" Edward swung an arm so close to Bear he could have struck him, and pointed an accusatory finger almost up his nose. "I told you to get everybody out!"

Red faced with anger, Bear maintained his composure best he could. "I told you there was people down there Guv! I told you, and you chose to flood it anyway!" He kept his voice just below a boom. Edward span away from Bear and looked back at the security feed. The energy and rage suddenly seemed to abandon him, and he slumped against the security monitors, resting a hand up against the glass screen. "This wasn't supposed to happen..." Edward uttered with despair and disbelief.

Bear turned away from his bosses humiliating display, and walked outside the small room. Dr Wells collapsed into a slump on the floor and continued to rock back and forwards, pulling a small ADAM Hypo from her coat pocket and giving herself a quick, soothing zap.

Edward kept his eyes fixed on Grace as the water rose up around her. He remembered the terror when the Park had flooded the first time all those years ago, how terrifying it had been. This time, it had been his doing, his mindful decision, despite whatever off-the-cuff tirade he'd just hurled at Bear, he knew it was his fault.

"Why are you down there, you stupid old bitch!" he whispered over and over.


	30. Chapter Thirty

**Minerva's Den - The Thinker**

He just hoped he had enough time. Grace Holloway had been both a nuisance and a friend over the years, and despite his commitment to his decision to proceed with letting Dionysus Park flood, Edward didn't want to let old Gracey drown without at least trying to rescue her. He was angry at her for being there, and frustrated that once again events were turning against him and forcing his hand to make some extremely uncomfortable decisions.

He'd run from Dr Well's office, dragging the sobbing mess of a computer engineer along with him, and finally reached the input terminal inside the Thinker's chamber. Wiping a sweat from his forehead and then drying his hands on his suit trousers before poking at the switches, Edward opened a new query.

"Quick, you'll be quicker at putting in a request than me..." He shouted at Dr Well's as he dragged her closer by her lab coat. "Route the closest Big Sister's to swim through to Dionysus Park. Tell them to retrieve Grace Holloway! It shouldn't have completely flooded yet - by any luck they've kept ahead of the tide!"

**Dionysus Park - Triton Cinema - Balcony**

Grace sat sideways on the bannister than ran along the front of the balcony, coughing and wheezing as she struggled for breath. She was sodden with seawater from the waist down, and drenched in sweat from the waist up. Her eyes were flittering sharply between Melissa who sat by her feet in exhausted silence, and the crashing maelstrom of ocean that was rapidly engulfing the large auditorium and stage beneath them. The stalls had long since vanished beneath the frothing, swirling tide.

"My God... this is really gunna' be it for us..." Grace murmured, scared, but at peace with it. Melissa swung her head to look up at the old woman beside her, and through her disfigured face offered a look of guilt and sympathy.

"You... shouldn't have come down here. Why did you?" Her low-hanging jaw slurred her words slightly.

Grace reached out and put a hand on her hunched shoulder. "Melissa honey, I lost one of my girls to this city. I couldn't give up on the second... besides, I've sensed that I wasn't long for this world for quite some time now - at least this way, I go out making an effort..." tears began to stream down her plump, wrinkled cheeks. She looked back over the edge into the grumbling abyss below. Already, the cinema auditorium was half full.

Suddenly, both lept in shock at a high, metallic scream that called out above even the roar of the water. The first scream was so tremendously loud that it echoed from so many angles it was impossible to tell from where it had come. It was only when both Grace and Melissa had looked down, that they saw a red glow getting brighter and brighter from deep beneath the waters surface, giving the maelstrom a sort of malevolent eye in its very center. The glow grew stronger and stronger, until the unmistakable, domed helmet of a Big Sister broke through the surface, and her spider-like figure rose out of the water.

"Big Sister! Holy fuckin' shit! Big Sister!" Melissa shrieked, pulling a revolver from her pocket and straight away firing at the sinister arrival. Grace gasped in horror - she had in fact only seen a Big Sister very rarely for herself, perhaps once or twice, and even then from a great distance as one had swung past through the rafters of Paupers Drop. As the pair began to back away, Melissa firing off bullets indiscriminately, there came a second sound, a deafening crunching and crumbling, before before their eyes, a massive fissure broke the auditorium ceiling in two, and a wall of water came crashing down from it. A wall of wind and sea spray struck Grace, almost knocking her from her feet.

"Holy Mary, mother of God!" She cried out, frantically reaching for one of the seats beside her to steady her staggering legs. As she looked on at the waterfall, a second red glow appeared, and a second Big Sister began to climb through the crack, head first, using her spindly appendages to grip the ceiling and climb across it. The first Big Sister also reached the Balcony, and together, the two approached Grace and Melissa.

"Fuck off you filthy bitches! Fuck you!" Melissa screamed, running out of bullets and stopping to frantically search her ragged clothes for more. "Shit! Outta slugs!" She cursed, not noticing as the first Big Sister erupted from her perch on the Balcony Bannister, and came sailing down on top of her. She didn't even get to scream, before the Big Sister slammed a foot down against her head, tearing it from her neck, and ripping her spine from her back like a gruesome zipper.

"Oh my God, Melissa no!" Grace exclaimed in horror, holding one hand over her mouth as she watched the blood mixing with the rising water. "You beasts! You beasts!" She screamed, waiting for one to turn their sight finally on her. She knew there was no escape, this was her time, and she was ready to meet it head on. "Go on then, do your worst! Do it!" She wailed, as the pressure of the sea on the broken cieling finally became too much, as the sea came bearing down on all it could devour.


	31. Chapter Thirty-One

**Paupers Drop - Town Square**

Jack, along with the two girls that had seemingly developed a blind, fierce loyalty to their liberator, were walking slowly through the Town Square between the Fishbowl Diner and Paupers Drop Market. He'd done his best to dismantle as much of the metal and leather-bound suit from them as he could. The air was thick with the foul stench of body odor and mildew, and just above the constant trickling of countless leaks, there was a on-going grumble from the hundreds of people crammed in down there - some crying from hunger or their craving for ADAM, many arguing over the slightest of altercations, some had even comes to violent exchanges of Plasmid fire, leading to the ever growing number of bloating corpses that lay scattered throughout the whole of Paupers Drop. A large Atlantic Express car, that had long ago fallen from the rails that passed through overhead, now served as a giant tomb, where the majority of corpses had been dumped.

Jack had come back down to the Drop on his way back to the Sinclair Deluze, to ground himself - he'd left Edward Carson's penthouse feeling charmed and honored, as if he'd been met as a respected dignitary by an expert diplomat. It would have been very easy to succumb to Edward's charm, and the comfort of Mercury Suites as it underwent its re-building works. But Jack had still been able to recall how shocked he had been a few days ago when he had first arrived, as the state of disrepair most of the city was in, but moreover, the conditions the surviving residents of Rapture were being forced to abide.

Coming down to the drop again, had helped Jack to confirm that despite Edwards assurances, his plans just didn't convincing. These people, splicers or not, were living a life of suffering, day in, day out. Edward's vision for Rapture would take decades, if it was even possible at all, which was a pretty big 'if'. Jack knew that the ADAM cure he carried on his back could have positive effects for these people within a few days, and with many of these people in their right mind, a properly devised escape plan to the surface would be a viable possibility.

As he turned a corner, Jack stopped by a large window to watch the view of the city through the waving fields of seaweed. He followed a school of fish wave between two large boulders, and admired the grandeur of a large whale that was moving between the Athena's Glory and Hestia Chambers buildings, like a zeppelin moving between Manhattan Skyscrapers in a reel of old 1930's news footage.

"Oi mate, you Ryan's son?" A hunching, swaggering splicer called our from a corner. Jack turned and gave him a cautious yet polite smile;

"I'm Jack Ryan, yes."

"How comes ya slummin' it down here with the dregs? Thought a Ryan would be up banging a bimbo in Eve's Garden..." He whined, rolling a premptive fist with one hand, and clutching a bottle of Chechnya Vodka in the other, that had clearly been empty for days.

"Oh shut up Freddie, you're day dreamin' again! Eve's Garden ain't been open for years!" A sweating, chubby older woman next to him spat as she dragged him into her clutches by his shirt.

"You'd get a good hit of ADAM thrown in back in them days... the betty's stashed it in their knicker drawers..." He chuckled, whilst coughing and drooling out of one corner of his misshapen mouth.

The sight appalled Jack, and he could easily have given into the same terror he'd felt when he first came to Rapture, and fled from the masses of psychotic drug addicts that would lynch him with barely a moments notice, but at the same time, those of them that were still relatively sane served to remind him they were human, and could be again, thanks to Dr Tenenbaum.

"Just because I share his DNA, do not mistake me for an Andrew Ryan Junior - I am certainly not like him, and I do not share his ideals. I'm here to help... if I can." Jack explained, the two sisters quietly growing closer ready to defend him if needed.

"We don't need ya help, we need your ADAM!" He screamed, itching to race forward but scared off by the two Big Sisters.

A quiet, exhausted voice suddenly interrupted the conversation; "We need you son, I think we need you more than anyone's given you credit for..." Jack turned to face Grace Holloway... she was drenched, her skin and clothes still running with water, her lips and limbs were quivering, and her eyes were strained and bloodshot. She was without one of her trademark hats, her dark hair sodden and flat. She was without her walking stick or even shoes, and stood bracing against a pillar with one arm.

"Grace?" Jack gasped, walking closer to her.

' _Good Evening, my friends. I would initially like to inform you all that the second stage of our oxygen and power conservation plan has been successful. Every step forward guarantee's us all more air, more lighting, and brings us a step closer to the resurrection of our great city!"_

The public address system suddenly rang out throughout the city.

' _A second announcement - it has come to our attention that Grace Holloway has been in an unfortunate accident, and may now be wondering somewhere in the vicinity of Paupers Drop in a confused state. It would be a personal favour to me, if I could call upon you all to find dear Grace, and bring her to the attention of one of your area wardens, who can see that Grace is brought to me for proper medical attention immediately."_

Jack saw the change in Grace's face, fear twisted her expression, and she began to edge backwards away from the crowds of the Town Square, vanishing into the shadows. He too could see how they had all fallen quiet, and begun to stare her down. One or two of the bolder splicers had already grasped hold of whatever they could - glass bottles, fish hooks, piping, and were starting to brandish the items over their heads as they approached the terrified old woman.

"Hold on now, we're all part of the family..." Grace whined, almost falling backwards, holding out an arm to ward them off. Jack quickly ran across, and beckoned both Ellie and Beth to stand between Grace and the approaching splicers. He swung his arm under Grace's and took hold of her, taking her weight off her own bare feet.

"Let's get you home Grace, we won't let anyone touch you."


	32. Chapter Thirty-Two

**Hephaestus - Rapture Central Control - Office of Edward Carson**

Boxer hauled in the large crate, that was escorted by the anxious looking Doctors Petrov and Arenberg. Petrov kept a hand laid on the lid of the crate, and wouldn't let go until they all came to a halt in front of Edward's desk.

"Good morning Doctors, you are both looking well." Edward smiled, standing and leaning forward offering a handshake, which neither Doctor accepted. He was already in a state of apprehension this morning - Grace Holloway was resisting his calls for her to visit and reports were that Jack was holed up with her, keeping the splicers at bay with his pet sisters, or 'Pet Bitches' as he'd accidentally referred to them earlier that day. He tried to push Grace to the back of his mind for the moment, and gestured for the Doctors to start speaking.

"So this is the first fresh shipment of ADAM we've produced since 1959. You know what that means don't you..." Dr Arenberg's tone was patronising and it felt as though she was accusing Edward of something.

"You'll have to enlighten me?" Edward replied through clenched teeth and a forced smile, doing his best as ever not to react to Dr Arenberg's rotten personality. Dr Petrov stepped in however to answer, holding a hand up to silence Dr Arenberg. He had turned out to be reliable in his efforts to maintain a diplomatic, constructive line of communication between the scientists of Point Prometheus and Edward Carson and his growing pool of associates.

"What Dr Arenberg means, sir, is that we've officially used up every drop of ADAM that was being stored in reserve, or that had been gathered from corpses and recycled by the little sisters. In short, you've burnt through a supply intended to last three months, in two weeks." He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Edward cleared his throat, and walked around the large mahogany desk up to the crate. With a firm gesture, he signaled Boxer to pull off the lid of the crate. He then reached in, and took out a shining new bottle of luminescent red liquid - fresh, raw ADAM.

"You promised that you were working towards eradicating ADAM - yet we've turned almost as much over to you as we would have done to Frank Fontaine! And for nothing, might I add!" Petrov was firm, yet still more polite than the glaring Dr Arenberg.

Edward swallowed hard, he knew he'd been called out. Yes, he admitted that the people of Rapture were hungrier than anyone could have imagined for ADAM, it had shocked even those such as he, that had lived for years among the violent, desperate addicts running riot across the city. However, as he held up the ADAM vial and admired it, Edward appreciated how much this devilish drug had done for him. He had hated it, for what the genetic arms race it created had done to his poor Sheridan, yet now, it had now allowed him to unite and control almost three hundred men and women into a stop-gap workforce. He could feel the control it gave him, and the power to bring back his beloved home, Rapture.

"For nothing? I'm sorry but I disagree! I disagree entirely, Dr Petrov. I think the extension of life my efforts have given the city, and consequentially, given you, is suitable recompense. You may well have already been drowned by now if it wasn't for what I've accomplished!" The two Doctors were silent, biting their lips unhappily.

"I grant you, we're using slightly more than I had anticipated. But a mere sip was only enough to get those poor buggers down to Hepheastus in the first place, if I wasn't keeping them topped up, they'd do little more than shit and piss up the geothermal core, never mind repair and operate it." Edward waved in the direction of the office door that led out to the core of Hephaestus, where the majority of his workforce were currently. "So if we need to keep production up for a while longer, I need your commitment. I trust the harvesting is going well? I've given you almost half our remaining contingent of Big Daddies..."

Dr Petrov begrudgingly nodded in confirmation. "Yes, the drastic drop in sea slug harvesting in the last decade gave the slugs the chance to re-populate in droves. Dr Lamb was only able to send out perhaps one or two harvesting expeditions a month, but we have the Big Daddies out there in shifts day and night at the moment."

Dr Arenberg hissed and jabbed Dr Petrov with her elbow to shut him up. "Don't tell him that, he'll soon have us bathing Rapture in fucking ADAM if you make out we have some sort of surplus!" She turned her angry, burning eyes back to Edward. "The fact that you've got thugs restricting us to the laboratories and forbidding us from divulging the fact we are producing again, only proves that you're up to no good. You have no intention of stemming the flow of ADAM do you?" Her wide mouth was oozing slightly from a small cluster of warts in its corner, and her tongue appeared to be too long to remain contained behind her teeth.

"I think, Dr Arenberg, that it's rather rich for the ADAM addict to take the high ground over the man that's still able to control himself..." Edward knew there was no arguing he still looked the most human of the group, despite the slight hunch in his back and a few skin blemishes. Again, Edward noticed how much shorter his temper was growing with each passing day. It was the aggravation of fighting to save a people that seemed determined to bring about their demise however they could.

"Listen, I supply resources to protect, power, heat and feed you and your colleagues in Point Prometheus. I will continue to do so as long as you bring me this ADAM, bring me what I need to control Rapture..." He growled, waving the ADAM over his head.

"I thought we were _saving_ Rapture?" Dr Arenberg sarcastically sneered.

Edward was angered by the remark, the accusation behind it was clearer than the ocean that enveloped them all. He slammed the ADAM back down into the case, and walked right up to them both. "When my city is back, when the lights are brighter than ever before, when the music plays louder and the people cheer longer than ever before - and you self-righteous scientists are breaking through barriers you'd never before dreamt of... I will expect your apology." He waved a shaking finger at her, before waving an arm again to Boxer, ordering their removal from his office. "Escort the Doctor's back to Point Prometheus, and get that crate down to the workshops ready for mid-morning distribution to the workers."

Left alone in his office, what was once Andrew Ryan Office, Edward collapsed down into his chair, infuriated. In part, he understood for the first time, what sort of mind frame Andrew Ryan must have been in back in 1960, when he tried to throw the self-destruct switch on the city - when he had realized that he was perhaps the only man truly worthy of Rapture. With Andrew Ryan long dead and his beloved Sheridan gone too, Edward felt that perhaps now he was very last of the true visionaries of the pre-war Rapture. How lonely that realization was... and as he pondered on it, Edward noticed more clearly the silence in the room, and the still depth of the sea through the windows.

If there was one person that could potentially see things the way he did, who could understand how fucking stupid the people of Rapture had become and appreciate how much Edward had accomplished, it was Jack Ryan - son of the cities founder. He just wished Jack would see past this blinkered obsession over the ADAM cure, and share the bigger picture it seemed only Edward could imagine.


	33. Chapter Thirty-Three

**Sinclair Deluxe - Apartment of Grace Holloway**

They'd had to clear out a number of squatting splicers that had taken over her apartment in a matter of a few short hours, but finally the bedroom was clear, and Grace was laid out under a number of scrounged blankets. Jack had helped her to dry herself off, and had then sat with her as she cried for hours over the loss of Melissa in Dionysus Park - her traumatic loss had seemingly re-opened old wounds, and the poor old girl had cried again over Eleanor Lamb, and then that had fed her re-counting the story of how she'd been used and influenced like a damn fool by Sofia Lamb.

When her wailing had subsided and she'd fallen into a feverish slumber, Jack had questioned whether she would ever wake up again. Grace truly was the embodiment of all the ways Rapture could make a person suffer.

Much of what she had said had been ramblings, hysteria, but Jack had picked up enough to deduce that it appeared Edward Carson had authorized the flooding of Dionysus Park, whilst having at least some information indicating people were still down there. That story raised a number of questions for Jack about what he had experienced back in the Ryan Amusements Park. Perhaps that 'terrible accident' hadn't been as far out of Edward's control as he'd have people believe. how he hoped he was wrong.

With a waking groan, Grace opened her eyes and for a moment, stared blankly up at the bowed, cracking ceiling. Jack lent forward and gently whispered. "Well hello there, I wasn't expecting you awake so soon." He kept his voice gentle. He looked over at Ellie and Beth, who had both taken off their helmets and were snoozing soundly against each other on the collapsed sofa - he didn't want to wake them.

"Son...Jack, we need to let Rapture die. Even help it to die..." A fresh tear ran from the corner of her eye. "It doesn't matter who pulls the strings, Rapture is a slice of hell, and always will be."

Jack sighed, knowing why she would say such a thing. "It can't be all that bad with people as kind as you down here. The cities a pile of shit right now I'll admit, but if we got everyone cured from their dependency on ADAM, reversed the lunacy it's laced their minds with - we may find a few more good one's among the crowd. Good people worth saving." He looked across as the two sleeping sisters again - they reaffirmed his belief, that he had to pursue his original mission. He could easily have turned his back on Rapture for good - but then he would never have found them, and had the chance to turn their lives around into something worth fighting for. Their two lives alone were worth the fight.

Grace saw how he was looking at them, and understood what he was thinking.

"You'll have to forgive a tired old gal's pessimism. I know for a fact there are people worth saving - if we can. But as long as they are down here in Rapture, they'll never truly be saved. If you want to save the people of Rapture, Jack, you get 'em up to the surface, get them the hell out of Rapture!" She coughed under the strain of her getting emotional. "I don't know if it was under orders from Edward or not, but his men knew there were people still down in Dionysus Park, and they did jack-shit trying to get them out before it flooded. Those bastards let them die without as much as a second thought."

Jack leant back into his seat and sighed again - his doubts and concerns screaming louder in his mind. "I had hoped Edward was above all of that - I mean so far, I like the guy... I think I do anyway. He's made me some pretty strong assurances..." Jack stopped when he realized he was speaking aloud and trying to assure himself more than he was Grace Holloway.

"Edward's screwed up Jack, whatever promises he has made - whatever he does or doesn't know about the people that have died in the floods, you can't trust him. You're going to have to stick to your guns and do what you came down here to do without his help." Grace reached out and wrapped a hand around his.

"I realise that... I just wish I could prove his guilt to myself, it would make it easier for me to give up on the vision for this city he professes to have. I wish I could prove that going against Edward was my only choice..."

Grace slowly turned to face him directly. "If you need it that bad son, I 'reckon I know where you can find proof. Minerva's Den."


	34. Chapter Thirty-Four

**Ocean Floor - Just outside Minerva's Den**

Jack hadn't been keen to slide into another diving suit quite so soon - his trip down to Rapture from the lighthouse in the last one had been a harrowing experience enough. Ellie and Beth walked on just ahead of him, clearing the path ahead. The ADAM Cure had already started to weaken their grasp on the wielding of ADAM, and they were slowly using the use of Plasmids now - it had taken all the might Ellie had to conjure up enough Electrobolt to power up the air lock they had left the city through. Yet still, they had grown up in the suits they still wore, and were as comfortably traversing the ocean floor as Jack was on dry land.

Minerva's Den was yet another domain in Rapture Jack had not yet seen, and his interest was undeniably peaked. During his first visit, the technological wonders of Rapture had been so incredibly overwhelming, that it had been beyond him to work out that such tremendous levels of automation would have to be controlled from somewhere, by some central system - even that was as far as his mind could comprehend, as he was no electrical or computer genius. The more he thought back to that fateful visit from Tenenbaum, the more he began to recollect her mentioning about 'The Thinker', and something about the companion that had been with her having made a copy of its program. That was as much as his limited understanding had taken in.

Having brought down his father Andrew Ryan, and Fontain, Jack supposed that when he had left Rapture all those years ago, he had done so with an unconscious sensation of having dominated the city, beaten it and subdued it. He had lived in such harmony on the surface with his adopted daughters because he had for some reason convinced himself Rapture had failed to exist beyond his departure. But having been back for a number of days now, Jack again began to feel the overwhelming awe of Rapture, and that feeling of being so incredibly small in comparison was nagging him.

As he climbed up and over a large shelf of rock, he looked up at the skyscrapers, most of which were still lit and intact. He had been given the opportunity to take the city back then, but he had chosen to leave it - perhaps under some immature, deluded impression it was a lost cause - a sinking ship. Had he made the right choice? It certainly was bothering him more and more that Sofia Lamb, and now Edward Carson, were picking up where he had failed to act, and now wielded the might of his father's great city - his rightful inheritance.

As the satchel of ADAM hung heavy on his shoulder, he thought of Dr Tenenbaum. The very reason she had trusted him and chosen to task him with delivering her ADAM cure, had been because she believed him to be above Rapture and its temptations, and he wanted to think she was right - but right now, he wasn't entirely sure. There was a devil sitting on his shoulder, that pressed Jack to consider dethroning Edward and taking his place. If Minerva's Den did turn up some proof that Edward was actively sanctioning the deaths of Rapture citizens, and fueling their ADAM use in some way, that would give Jack leverage over Edward, and add to his already powerful influence over the people... it was tempting.

As soon as Jack realised he was going so far with this trail of thought that he was starting to hope to find dirt on Edward, he slapped the thoughts down. No. He wanted to trust Edward, he liked him - and Jack wasn't cut out to run a city. He had a family back on the surface, to whom he had to return in one piece. Rapture could never be a viable option for his future, and he had to remained focused on keeping his ambitions separate from Rapture's future, whatever that was to be.

Ellie and Beth came up against a large pile of wreckage, where a tunnel had imploded and collapsed. So used to their enhanced strength, both began to thrust their arms towards it expecting a blast of telekinesis to burst forth from their palms and obliterate the pile of Ryanium - when nothing happened, in frustration they both rushed to try and push the pile clear. It was too heavy for them. Jack felt a level of guilt, for taking such incredible powers away from them, but surely anyone would happily give that up to be free from ADAM sickness and insanity? He hoped, as their minds continued to clear, they would see it that way.

Jack waved ahead, indicating that they should give up, and help each other to climb up and over the wreckage instead. When he had climbed up to the top of the pile, he could make out the large glowing sign - 'Minerva's Den - Rapture's Technology Center' and beneath that, 'Rapture Central Computing' along with a number of logo's for subsidiary companies. Considering that the surface world was only now starting to even hear the word 'computer', Jack shook his head in another realization of just how far ahead the city had been, and yet all that wonder and progress lay here at the bottom of the sea, rusting and fading away, benefiting nobody - such a waste.

Already, they could see two other Big Sisters and a Big Daddy patrolling around the outside of the building, the Big Daddy holding his large drill at the ready, and the two Big Sister's launching from platform to platform, keeping an eager watch for any intruders. Grace had warned him that this would be the case, and so he and the two girls began to follow a small outcrop of reef that concealed them, until they had safely passed by the main entrance. They were heading for an airlock reportedly on the far side, that would take them directly into the central operations wing of the building. Passing around, it was evident this building was recieving almost as much care and work as Mercury Suites was - almost every light was burning bright, and there were at least two further Big Daddies fitting new bolts and seals to leaking windows and cleaning muck from the glass. A further indication that Edward's priorities were questionable - as far as Jack knew, even the toilets in Paupers Drop hadn't received that kind of care.

After a further climb up a small cliff face of rock, the trio came down beside a sunken Bathysphere, and followed a path from there to the waiting airlock. There had been a Big Daddy stationed there too, but they had waited out of sight, and watched him vault up to top-floor window that had suddenly began to bubble, indicating a broken seam. Seizing the chance, they scurried across the seabed into the airlock.


	35. Chapter Thirty-Five

**Paupers Drop - Fishbowl Diner**

Aside from the occasional cackle or scream from some of the subdued splicers who had less of their marbles left than most, the central Plaza in which the Fishbowl Diner stood sounded today much like it had nearly twenty years ago. It was bustling with people, most squatting in corners on filthy mattresses or under tents made from thread-bare carpets.

Grace's ill health following her ordeal in Dionysus Park was clear to everyone, as she struggled to pull herself through the tunnel that lead to the Fishbowl Diner. She was coughing hard, and her eyes couldn't focus on a single direction, but instead appeared to roll up and down in her head involuntarily as she swooned. Finally, having refused offers of help from a number of less-spliced citizens who could think clearly enough to do so, she let her weight collapse into one of the booths inside the diner, opposite her guest that had been waiting patiently.

"Hello, Stanley." She wheezed, fighting for breath. She tried to rest her cane against the table, but missed and let it drop to the floor.

Stanley Poole was drawn and tired, with dark bags under his eyes and he'd let his hair grow almost to his shoulders. He stank worse than most of the splicers, of damp and bad body odor. Since the truth had come out about his betrayal not only to Sofia Lamb but to the entire cult that had been the 'Rapture Family', he had been a true outcast, terrified to set foot anywhere near Rapture's more populated areas. Grace looked down upon him, and recalled how tempted she had been to arrange his murder when she had found out about it - he had drowned so many of her friends back then, and that it had been he who had little Eleanor Lamb snatched from under her care.

Stanley didn't respond, but simply looked up at her from the table with depressed, sorrowful eyes.

"The only reason you're still breathin', is because I heard Sofia Lamb had forgiven you for what you did. Can't say I would have been so kind in her shoes..." She spat the words at him. "But I can't have a woman like Lamb get one up on me by forgivin' a man that I couldn't." She heaved for breath again as her temper raged.

"Then why did you have me brought here - I'd have stayed well enough away." He whimpered like a scolded dog.

"Because god damn' it I need your help. That's why. I was hopin' you might like the chance to make up for what you did."

Stanley was skeptical, and it was written all over his face. "I'd rather just keep myself to myself, I won't come near you or the drop, I swear!"

"Shut up and listen, fool. Trust me, you don't wanna be hidin' out in the remote parts of this city at the moment - no guarantee's you won't wake up to a wall of water..." Stanley didn't understand what she meant, but neither did he press her.

Grace realized her bitterness and distrust of Edward had grown, and that it was slipping out. Composing herself, she continued. "Listen Stanley, I'll offer you a reprieve from the wrath of the folk down here in the Drop, and from me, and I'll even give you a warm bed in the Deluxe, if you'll do something for me. The one thing a weasel like you is good for, is gettin' information on things you ain't supposed to. Infiltratin'." She began to lower her voice.

Stanley looked even sadder, ashamed of his reputation, and finally succumbing to the guilt of what he had done when he snatched Eleanor Lamb and drowned Dionysus Park's guests. "What is it you want to find out? It's not like there's much industrial espionage going on down here these days" As he spoke, his breath struck Grace from across the table.

"It's Edward. Rapture's latest savior. I need to know what he's got goin' on up in Point Prometheus." Stanley's eyes grew larger, and he leant back. "Word is he has that place guarded like a small fortress - to stop splicers raiding the last of the ADAM supply up there."

Grace grumbled. "Last of the ADAM supply? I've been asking around, speakin' to the men he's got working down in Hephaestus. He's been dishing out ADAM like candy to kids. There can't possibly have been that much left, not in the entire damn city."

"So you think he's making more ADAM - so what? It'll keep the splicers from tearing up whats left of this shit pile."

Grace sighed, irritated at how little this man cared for anything other than his own skin. "We are at a cross roads, Stanley. Jack Ryan's back and he's offering a cure for ADAM! He wants to take everyone back to the surface. Now that's an option worth a dime. The other road, see's Edward trying to rebuild Rapture."

"Well surely either is good news?" Stanley shrugged.

"Wrong. See if Rapture's to live on, it has to live on without ADAM, without Plasmids or any other such damn nonsense. Edward's promise is that he will stem the flow of ADAM once the city is back on its feet - but I don't see that happenin'. If he's making more ADAM, he plans to use it. I won't watch these people dragged into a never ending cycle of ADAM-addicted slavery at Edward's or anyone hands. If Edward is lying, then we've just got another Ryan or Fontaine on our hands." Grace explained, wearily.

"So if you find out Edward Carson's been lying to everyone, you want him exposed? So Jack Ryan can have his way instead?"

"Either that, or let Rapture drown. Either way, I intend to see Rapture comes to an end. There's an expedition already underway to try and expose Edward Carson with information from The Thinker, but I need you to get into Point Prometheus and prove one way or another what is going on up there." Grace demanded.

Stanley took a moment to absorb everything she had said, and studied her face. "Tell me something, say i do this for you, and I come back with proof there is no fresh ADAM production, and Edward's good on his word. What then?"

Grace snarled slightly, and looked out the window onto the square. "You will find ADAM there Stanley, you will."

"Is that a hunch, or an instruction?" Stanley eyed her up, and she read the accusation in his tone.

"I want to believe Edward, but I don't. Rapture will go Jack Ryan's way, or _my_ way. The city doesn't have time left to take a gamble on someone like Edward. Bring me back the answers from Point Prometheus, whatever they are. I will then decide what to do with them."


	36. Chapter Thirty-Six

**Minerva's Den - Office of Dr Lydia Wells**

Dr Lydia Well's had tried desperately to slow down on the ADAM jabs she'd been giving herself. She'd never been one for full immersion in the drug, she'd seen too many people consumed by it even in its early days, and her devotion to her job as a Senior Programmer for Reed Wahl and Charles Milton Porter had always been stronger than her yearning for ADAM.

Yet, her intake of the glowing Red substance had increased over the last few days. The stress had been almost overwhelming, trying to maintain and programme 'The Thinker' almost single handed, with only a few of her subordinates left with more than half their marbles able to provide some level of assistance. That was her excuse at least. But as Lydia Wells sat in her chair and gazed out her viewport into the sea beyond, it was not her work that pulsed through her mind. She found herself plagued with the images from the security cameras in Dionysus Park, of Grace Holloway's tired old face looking back at her as she'd let in the floodwaters safely from her terminal there in the Operations wing of Minerva's Den. It was guilt, that the Doctor was now suffering from. It was an alien emotion to her - her life's work had always kept her looking forward, not back, and by its very nature had hidden her away in dark rooms away from any opportunities to make mistakes that would affect anyone but herself.

She gasped in relief as the last of the ADAM slipped through her veins, and she could finally yank the syringe from her arm. As she closed her eyes and let the liquid stimulate her senses and tingle in her bloodstream, Lydia felt the sudden return of a recurring itching on her forehead. She was developing a rash there - and she couldn't help but lift a hand to violently scratch at it in hope the itching would subside. As she tore at the rash with her fingers, she could feel her skin was toughening, almost going lumpy and leathery.

" _Doctor Lydia Wells - notification. Unauthorized access to Minerva's Den. Entry - Rapture Central Computing - Operations"_ The Thinker called out from the small speaker positioned on her desk beside the computer input panels.

She sort of heard the computers warning, but she did not comprehend it entirely. She let out a further sigh as a thick fog seemed to cloud her mind, and sparks of electrobolt began to dance involuntarily from her fingers as the rush of ADAM caused her limbs to convulse.

The Thinker repeated its monotone alert message a second time. Lydia Wells giggled, and began to hum a tune. "Oh no... Edward won't be happy about that..." she sang clumsily. Almost in an instant, her emotions flipped over, and a crash of depression and mania swept through her, and again she was confronted with the images of Grace Holloway racing to escape the flood waters. From seemingly every angle, she could suddenly hear shrieks and screams, calls for help from the many that had died in the recent floods across the city, all a result of her obedience to the instructions of Edward Carson.

**Minerva's Den - Rapture Central Computing**

Jack stood over a broken desk, sifting through an enormous pile of computer print outs, that made as much sense to him as one of Sander Cohen's paintings. If there was proof of Edwards alleged atrocities here in the Den, Jack was becoming more and more convinced he was not the person to send to find it. It could have been there staring him in the face on that very desk, and he wouldn't know it. The reams of paper were filled with numbers and equations, barely ever containing so much as a single intelligible sentence.

Throwing the last handful back down onto the desk, he turned to his two girls that were guarding the doorway. Neither had chosen to remove their helmets, as carrying them would slow them down in the event they had to defend against a splicer attack. But Jack could already notice the lack of confidence in the way they both stood - they seemed nervous, their legs slightly bent and their backs arched. It was still a bugger to try and get them to mutter much more than a 'yes' or 'no' to his questions, and neither would still offer full eye contact.

"Come on my dears, let's move on. There's nothing here that makes any sense to me..." He held out each arm as he approached them to offer a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"What have I done? Oh sweet Christ, what have I done?" The howling scream came from up a flight of stairs across the hallway, and made all three jump out of their wits. "Forgive me, forgive me for my wickedness! For the murder I have committed!"

Jack, pursued closely by Ellie and Beth, took off down the hall in search of the person making the noise. They were not the only ones it attracted however, as a mob of men and women in technicians coats seemed to pour into the same corridor from further doorways, hatches and holes broken through the walls and ceiling. Whilst some were blindly being drawn to the distinct possibility of finding someone with ADAM on their person, many others stopped in their tracks to observe the intruder and the two Big Sisters who flanked him. The sight of the latter was enough to cause them to hesitate, but only for a moment before they instead began to draw all manner of weaponry from their cardigans and corduroy trousers. Jack ran at first, not used to the fact that upon arrival he had injected the smallest amount of EVE back into his system for just such a confrontation. As Ellie and Beth fought to block him from the bullets and projectiles, Jack span around, and with both hands unleashed the strongest blast of Incinerate he could muster after such a lengthy abstinence.

The wave of fire was so ferocious that even the two Big Sisters leapt from its path, before it struck the aggressive gang of technicians. They began to scream and scramble away towards water, crying out "Have Mercy! Put it out! Put it out! I'm on fire!" Their wailing followed them from view, through the burning corridor until each of them fell silent, and only the crackling of the scorched floorboards remained.

Jack, still holding his hands out in front of him, was frozen in horror at what he had just done. He could feel the sweat he'd broken over the immense heat, turning cold and pouring down his neck as his heart beat hard in his chest. Pulling his arms back quickly, he clasped his hands together and pulled them to his chest, as if terrified he may unwillingly release a second inferno. "My god... I'm sorry!" He whispered. He looked back at the two sisters watching him, their heads tilted and their postures leant back, cautiously. "I'm sorry!" He cried to them both, horrified that they had seen him loose his cool and kill so easily. Almost as easily as he had done all those years ago... in this fucking, godforsaken city.


	37. Chapter Thirty-Seven

**Minerva's Den - Office of Dr Lydia Wells**

Lydia Wells couldn't recall how she had ended up sprawled across her office floor, her face smashed into the cold tiled floor among her damp collection of books and screwed up pieces of waste paper. Her head was spinning and she couldn't help but cry aloud as a wave of remorse repeatedly struck her as she began to try and count how many had possibly died as a result of her letting Ryan Amusements and Dionysus Park flood. She wept also for herself, for what Rapture had turned her into. She had once dreamed of building super-computers that would reshape the human condition for the benefit of all the world. Instead, she was forgotten nobody, feeding murderous instructions into a machine that the world never knew existed. She, and her beloved computer, were soon likely to be lost to the sea, her entire life a waste.

She cried again as she looked across the floor from her horizontal angle at the empty ADAM syringe she had disguarded, and wondered if that trickle in the bottom of the chamber would be enough to make up another shot. Just one more shot would be wonderful, enough to dull the cries that she couldn't block out, of everyone she had let die.

"Why did I do it?" She shrieked again, wearily trying to regain control enough of at least one arm, swinging it wildly outward towards the syringe trying to grab it.

Barely, Lydia could make out the hammering against her office door. It had tried to slide open, and jammed about a quarter of the way. Through the haze in her eyes, she could make out a number of arms reaching through the crack trying to push the door the rest of the way open. Somewhere among the chaos, she could see a pair of glowing red lights, that seemed to glare at her, accusing her, judging her.

"Leave me alone! Get away!" She called out, kicking her legs out in a vain effort to propel herself across the floor to the furthest corner from the door.

Within a few short minutes, Jack had the door open far enough to climb through, and pounced down onto the hysterical Dr Wells, who put what little energy she had left into resisting. He grabbed her wrists and held them above her head whilst she threw her legs around.

"Calm yourself down! I'm only trying to help you! Stop it!" He barked down at her, struggling to keep her in position.

"Don't bother yourself, stupid bastard. Leave me here, let me drown with the rest of Rapture. Its all this shit hole is good for now, drowning people." She began to tire, and stopped kicking. "That's all my glorious machine is useful for now - drowning people."

Jack didn't speak a word as the woman in his arms slowly fell into some sort of daze. He kept hold of her sweating, stinking body as she calmed down, and pondered what she had meant - whether there was any truth to her ranting. He still hoped more than anything that this venture would only confirm his wish that Edward was an honest, determined man with a genuine love for Rapture and its people - all of them. But already, this crazy woman's raving seemed to suggest 'The Thinker' had somehow been complicit in drownings - which by no stretch of the imagination could refer to the floodings across Rapture by Edward Carson's order.

Looking the woman over, Jack found her not to look terribly spliced up - certainly there was some ADAM use, her mania and fit was evidence of a recent hit, but other than a fresh rash and distortion of the skin across her face, she wasn't as deformed as the other splicers long past the point of insanity. He read the name stitched into her lab-coat just above her right pocket - ' _Dr. Lydia Wells - Senior Programmer_ '.

"Lydia? Is that your name?" Jack sat her up slightly, and then dragged her up into the armchair in front of her desk.

"Eugh...who's asking?" Her head was rolling around her shoulders, and she was fidgety. When she spoke, Jack was hit with a wave of onions, alcohol and tooth decay.

"My name is Jack. Are you alright? Do you need anything?" He put a hand on her own in a gentle gesture of friendship, but Dr Wells snatched it back and glared up at him through strands of her knotted hair that had fallen across her face.

"I need a hit of ADAM and a bottle of Chechnya... and for you lot to fuck off out of my office." Before Jack could think of what to say in reply, she spoke out again. "I'm done with Rapture, with it all. Gimme a drink and then I'll just let the sea in, finish us all off. God knows I've had enough practice... I couldn't fuck that up at least..." Pushing Jack's hands away, she pulled open a desk drawer and retrieved a bottle of Chechnya Vodka.

"Knew I had some left somewhere! It's not ADAM, but it'll do." She swigged what was left of the clear liquid straight from the bottle, and then settled into silently staring at the wall, like a naughty school girl that was being scolded by the headmaster.

"What do you mean, you've had enough practice? What is it you've been doing that could be worth all this screaming?" Jack kept his voice low and calm, hoping not to trigger another outburst.

"Practice..?" She asked, momentarily forgetting her own words before catching back up. "Oh... yeah. Well that's what I'm expected to do these days isn't it? For the good of the city! That why he said it was worth it... yes, the good of Rapture." She began to cry again, but this time without the screaming or violent fit. "We killed everyone down in that fucking fun park... drowned them all."

Jack tensed up at hearing someone finally come out and say it. Was that what she was saying, through all the drunken bullshit - that Ryan Amusements hadn't been an accident?

"And that bitch Lamb's place - Dinosaurs Park... or whatever it was. Filled the tank - filled it right up. All because I love my machine, and wanted to go on loving it..." She poured out a small trickle from the vodka bottle as she finished her sentence.

Jack turned away, and took himself around Dr Wells' desk to stand beside the window and look out at the city. He was angry, certainly, angry at himself for trying to trust anybody down here. Angry at everyone, out for themselves at whatever the cost, but moreover, he was furious with his decision all those years ago, to leave Rapture without a leader, when he could have stayed and taken the city for himself, and prevented any of this from happening. He knew why he made the decision to leave, and he knew deep down he would make the same decision again - but he hated himself for it. His anger quickly gave way to sadness - a deep mourning for Rapture, and for the lost hope he'd had of building a friendship with Edward Carson and working with him to restore Andrew Ryan's vision. His fathers vision.

"Will you come with us, Dr Wells? I know a lot of people that would be interested to hear what you've told me." He looked down at the quivering mess of a woman, doubtful of a positive response.

"Fuck you. I'm staying here until I drown, I told you that, you deaf bastard." Sighing with aggravation, Jack was ready to turn away and curse, when his gaze fell upon a Rapture Central Computing in-house gazette on Dr Wells' desk. Pushing some other documents aside, he looked down upon two pictures of Central Computing's founding members. He didn't recognize the picture of Reed Wahl, nor did he expect to - but the second photograph was undeniably of the man Jack had seen waiting in Brigid Tenenbaum's car, back when she had appeared on his doorstep! The man in the car had been scarred somehow certainly, but the shape of the head, the nose, and most certainly the eyes, were identical to the man in the photograph - Charles Milton Porter!

Jack smiled to himself - well that certainly tallied up with the passing comment Tenenbaum had made about having a copy of 'The Thinker's programme! It had made absolutely no sense to him at the time, but if Porter had escaped to the surface with Tenenbaum, there was every chance he had indeed taken whatever he could salvage of his computer with him!

Jack turned to Dr Wells, who was sitting up straighter with a slightly more composed expression. "Help me, Dr Wells, and I will reunite you with 'The Thinker' up on the surface."

She snorted back at him, and chortled. "Got a fleet of cargo ships and a submerging platform at your beck and call have you?"

Jack just smiled at her and leant forward with the newspaper, pointing to the picture of Charles Milton Porter. "The Thinker, is already up there. Porter is alive and well."


	38. Chapter Thirty-Eight

**Fort Frolic**

Edward tugged on his brand new jacket, ensuring it sat properly on his shoulders. Since trying to impress Jack Ryan, he'd been more than a little conscious of the deformities ADAM had inflicted him with, and he was keen that his new Jacket would do something to hide the slight sagging of his spine. He kept reminding himself that Jack Ryan wasn't Andrew Ryan, and therefore didn't warrant the same hero worship the great man used to, but Edward couldn't deny either that despite the potential hazards and disappointments Jack Ryan posed, he was quite taken with him. He hoped that his fresh suit and and keen smile may help them to work closer, and then they may be able to avoid some of the confrontations Edward foresaw on the horizon.

Since Dionysus Park had been permanently taken off the grid, the increase in available power had permitted Edward to have the pumps repaired and restored to full power in Fort Frolic. Despite its chequered past and Edward's own grim memories of the district's former owner - the psychotic Sander Cohen, Fort Frolic was an iconic part of the city, and one of great importance in Edwards plans. It had been one of the very first public spaces to open, and had hosted the true creme de la creme of Rapture Society.

None of the neon lights were currently lit, many of which were broken beyond repair and would need replacing, but still having brought the water level down and dried the place out was a start. Edward gleamed with pride as he looked up and around at the vast atrium. With Hephaestus now ticking over at a stable fifteen percent capacity, and Mercury Suite's renovations speeding towards completion within the week, Jack would turn his attention, and all the splicer workers he could spare, to re-building Fort Frolic, with Poseidon Plaza close behind it.

He turned to look at his tailing posse of less spliced Rapture Citizens, whom Edward planned on forming into the new Rapture Council. The group had swollen considerably in just a few short days. Those that had seen fit to avoid the ADAM and whole themselves up best they could in relative safety had now been able to come out and enjoy a position of relative comfort and power in the new order that was forming, as long as they had some level of expertise or skills to offer of course. Andrew Ryan wouldn't have had it any other way.

"My friends, this is to be our next renovation project!" Edward gleamed and threw his arms out in excitement, picturing himself already on the reconstructed Fleet Hall Stage. It was to his outrage therefore, when an expression of pessimism raged through the group of people like a plague. As Edward lowered his arms and let his smile dull, Herbert Finch, a balding, fat man who was the former owner of Twilight Fields Funeral Home, hesitantly stepped forward.

"I'm sorry Edward, we're all behind you on bringing Rapture back, you know that." He began.

"But." Edward snapped slightly, humiliated by the groups taking the wind out of his sails.

"But don't you think a music hall should be way further down the list of priorities? The workforce we're having to make do with is lackluster at best, rife with insubordination and insanity. To stretch such an unreliable workforce to encompass a massive renovation such as this would almost bring a halt to the far more pressing issues!" Finch emphasized, looking back to the others in the group for their supportive nods of agreement.

"We have Mercury Suites to live in comfortably, we have Hephaestus to power it..." Edward fought to reel off as many of the recent accomplishments as possible.

"Yes Edward, but that just sorts us out. We have a mass of thousands crammed down in Paupers Drop all begging to be fed, and all off the efforts of two fishing submersibles out of Neptunes Bounty that are only just holding together. We need men to work on restoring further fishing vessels before we have an accident down there. We need men working on further living quarters, we need men working to restore further power from the Geothermal Core..." He continued.

Edward clenched his jaw and held his tongue. He was furious, being lectured on what had to be done by people that had hidden away in bolt holes and shat in buckets whilst he had been actually out doing something to save the city from destruction! What infuriated him more, was that he knew they were right. He could almost feel Sheridans hand on his shoulder, whispering in that soothing tone ' _I'm sorry my love, but you know they are right_ '. He knew that was what Sheridan would have said.

"I've already done more for those people down in Paupers Drop than anyone else, more than Lamb or Fontaine ever did! I saved them! Now its time they start working to help themselves. They have air, light and warmth - to an excess that borders on charity on my part! Now if they wish to live as we do now in Mercury Suites, let them pick up the tools and work for it. If they want fish, then they can find a way to compensate a fisherman for his efforts. If they need to rebuild the submersibles, they can find a way to compensate a mechanic for the sweat he puts into it. I wanted to bring Hephaestus back to life, so I paid those sorry fuckers in ADAM to get it beating again. That is Rapture, there is no place for Altruism here!"

Edward stopped, and turned away. He'd justified himself, and reiterated the principles upon which Rapture was built, and would be re-built. Yet he knew, in order to keep the loyalty of these people, that he would have to concede on this point.

"I will delay the renovation of Fort Frolic, until Hephaestus is up to thirty percent of capacity, we have both a viable fishing fleet, and restoration of at least one agricultural district. But I will not deny us the benefits of a little comfort and entertainment when we have worked so hard to earn it! And Fort Frolic will be open to anyone from Paupers Drop that has earnt the money to pay for a ticket! As Andrew Ryan would have had it."

"Just don't expect a full house anytime soon Edward. Tickets to a show may be on your list of priorities, but it won't be for the rest of the city. Be careful, the great chain pulled away from Andrew Ryan. It can pull away from you just as easily." Mumbled an older woman at the back, Ms Lily Van Zant. Edward glared back with a seething rage at the disrespect and insubordination of that remark.

After a long, awkward silence, Edward waved them away. "Well go on then, get out then before I have it all shut back down." He snapped as he began to herd them towards the exit. Some desperately tried to appease him and calm him from his upset, "Don't undo the work you've done in draining it Edward, I'm sure we'll be back to work on it soon!" one man cheered, "Chin up old boy - we'll have Fleet Hall jumping to a live band before you can blink, just got to iron out the kinks elsewhere first!" Another added whilst patting Edward on the back.

He didn't respond, but silently waited until they had all taken the Bathysphere from the Metro station back to Olympus Heights. Once he was alone, he threw a powerful kick at a trash can that sent it tumbling through the station with a thunderous crash. He'd been made to look a fool, and the embarrassment was gut-wrenching.

He already had Grace Holloway and most likely Jack Ryan casting doubts upon his integrity, and now his own city council were calling him out on poor decisions and questioning his motives. How he desperately wished Sheridan was still alive, there with him. He would have commanded nothing but respect and blind obedience, just as any great man could. Just as Jack Ryan seemed to already be gaining support and popularity without so much as lifting a finger to save the city, after abandoning it years ago!

Edward stood alone in the metro station, and looked up out of the overhead canopy, wishing he could be as great as Sheridan had been, or Andrew Ryan. He felt so very alone at that point. As he began to walk back to take one last look at the Fort Frolic atrium, something struck him. He was alone now, because Sheridan and Andrew Ryan were both dead. They had been great men, certainly, but neither of them, or Jack Ryan for that matter, had been great enough to hold on to Rapture, to save themselves from its parasites and its doubters. Edward was, in comparison, very much alive. He had faced the trials they had both faced, and come out of it still in one piece.

"Fuck it." He declared suddenly. "Fuck it!" He repeated, louder. He may not have been a great man, but he'd beaten the rest. That stood for something. So now, whatever it took, whatever he had to do, he would do it. Edward Carson was going to be the very greatest man of Rapture's history. But unlike all the others, he would not hesitate to rid himself of doubters before they rid themselves of him. And he was going to start with that bitch Lily Van Zant.


	39. Chapter Thirty-Nine

**Point Prometheus**

The air vent was musty and claustrophobic, and Stanley Poole was trying not to gag on the stench of the slime and mold he was having to crawl through. He was proud of just how many 'back door's he had found to many of Rapture's key areas, and this one had been particularly hard to find back in Fontaine's heyday. Back when Stanley had still been a high roller with the Rapture Tribune, before his days spent infiltrating Dionysus Park, he had been trying to compete with Ralph Spinner, or simply "Paparazzi" as the city had come to nickname him due to his reputation as the most intrusive and thorough journalist in the city. Ralph Spinner had seemingly been obsessed with Fontaine, and had been seen scouting out every single property Fontaine owned in Rapture, and even spent countless hours squatting outside his Mercury Suites Penthouse.

The key area that Spinner hadn't been able to get into however, had been Point Prometheus - mainly because it's 'neutral' status as the ADAM gathering facility that fed both Fontaine's and Ryan's companies, had meant twice the security. However, when the job came through from Augustus Sinclair on behalf of Andrew Ryan to dig up whatever dirt he could find on Sofia Lamb, they had given Stanley access to some of the cities most detailed blue prints back when they had planned a physical infiltration rather than the social infiltration that had ultimately seen Stanley welcomed into Dionysus Park.

Hoping to take the lead over Spinner before having to devote himself to the ruse of being the newest member of the Rapture family, Stanley had used the blue prints made available to him to find himself a direct route into Point Prometheus. Unfortunately, Sofia Lamb had pushed forward their meeting, and he had never had the chance to test this route until now.

A decade ago, this air duct would have been warm and clean, kept up by the army of maintenance personnel employed by Ryan Industries, but the decade of war and mismanagement had let all manner of shit, piss and rotting sewage build up, and Stanley could only prey the length of the pipe was nowhere near as long as it appeared on the blueprints.

Crawling onwards with only a torch in one hand to light his way, he passed several dead cats at various stages of decay, and one female splicer that must have been trying her best to reach some ADAM - daft old girl had nearly made it. Finally, Stanley could make out some light coming through a dirty grill at the end of the pipe. A good swing of his torch broke the grill away, and with a sigh of relief he spilled out of the air duct into a small storage room. The single light overhead was intermittently blinking, and a blanket of cobwebs covered a number of medical cabinets, a dirty hospital gurney and a number of forgotten propane tanks. Assuming he was fairly safe in a room that hadn't been visited in possibly the last decade, he swiftly took off his satchel, and changed into the spare set of clothes he had carried with him, casting the grimy clothes he had come in back down into the pipe.

Wishing he had a dose of the 'Peeping Tom' plasmid to hand, Stanley carefully began to open the door. It led out into the large atrium that sat at the heart of Point Prometheus. Whilst oozing his way through the air ducts, Stanley had considered this mission given to him by Grace Holloway a fools errand and most likely a wild goose chase - but that assumption was quickly proven false. As Stanley moved to peer over the banister down into the lower level of Point Prometheus, he was stunned to see a hive of activity. The entire lower level had been re purposed with each wall lined with large water tanks. Several Big Daddies were stomping through, depositing large numbers of sea slugs into the tanks from nets that hung over their backs. Wide-eyed, Stanley watched in amazement at just how many sea slugs those big lugs had managed to gather, there had to be hundreds already in the tanks.

Suddenly, a sound that struck Stanley to his very core came from the far end of the atrium. It was a sound that brought up the memory of one of Stanley's greatest mistakes, the one that ultimately led to his fall from grace and alienation from Raptures population. The little girl's singing was almost indistinguishable from that of little Eleanor Lamb - the girl he had sold off to the Little Sister's Orphanage in desperation when she had threatened to expose him and his efforts to completely ruin Sofia Lamb. Looking down in horror, the girl even looked a little like Eleanor. It had been a while since Stanley had seen any children in Rapture - of course the spliced up idiots that roamed the ruins of the city still fucked like rabbits, but their excessive ADAM addiction had either rendered them infertile, or had resulted in their children being still born. Any children that had made it to term and survived the birth had been left to fend for themselves in a city that was itself insane - so it took no stretch of the imagination to figure out how long a child alone would survive. Yet, there one was, a little girl of around six or seven, walking hand in hand with a tall, broadly-built man in a dirty lab coat, towards the facility at the far end of the atrium, the 'Little Wonders Educational Facility'.

Even a selfish, shallow man such as Stanley Poole, could feel the tug at his heart strings, as that sweet little girl vanished through those doors. He knew all too well what would now be done to her, what she would become. It was happening again - Grace was right, and he would have to break it to her.


	40. Chapter Forty

**Neptune's Bounty - Lower Wharf - Maintenance Ducts beneath Fontaine Fisheries**

Edward leant back against the moist, mould-covered wall and waved his thick wellington boots around in the ankle-deep water. He sighed with regret, before looking back Ms Lily Van Zant, hanging by her wrists from a large water pipe that snaked across the ceiling. Bear stood to her left, his fist held out and curled, ready to release another torrent of Electrobolt through the old girls body upon Edwards command.

Lily Van Zant had been one of the many not to splice at all, and as such until this point she had retained a fairly human visage, with the excpetion of looking rather gaunt and tired as a result of malnourishment and lack of sunlight. Yet after having spent the last two hours under Bear's heavy hand, her wrinkled old face was as swollen and distorted as that of the most enthusiastic splicer.

Edward did not want to be doing this - he had set out with a vision that would have led to him being loved and embraced by every man and woman left alive in the city. Yet his endeavors seemed to be bringing nothing but trouble and resistance - and in order for him to pursue his destiny and succeed where Ryan, Fontaine and Lamb had failed, he would have to clear the road ahead of any doubters. He'd heard the stories of how Ryan had his security chief Sullivan bring Fontaine's goons down to this maintenance duct, so he had felt it fitting to use it again for the very same purpose. It was also conveniently close to his next appointment, observing the work being done to repair the fishing submersibles.

"Lily... Lily, please let us bring this to a close. Who else shares your doubts about me? I'm only going to ask this one last time." He practically wanted to beg the poor old girl, but compared to Bear's stone-faced approach that would make Edward look utterly pathetic.

"I never doubted your resolve... I was supporting you every step of the way!" She coughed up a mix of bile and blood, and spat it out down her top.

"I used to think so, Lily, I really did. But you humiliated me yesterday, in front of the rest of the council. You even presumed to threaten me that I would loose my grip on Rapture..." Edward used the anger the memory filled him with and channeled it into his voice. Stepping closer to her, he gave a single nod to Bear, who obeyed and clasped MS Van Zant's ankle, sending a powerful blast of electricity up through her lower body. She shrieked and convulsed under the pain, pissing herself like a frightened dog.

"What I said, I said to help guide you... we all wanted you to succeed... to save the city..." She spat out each word between weeps. Edward heard only the insinuation in her words... " _...wanted_ me to succeed?" He snarled, growing angry again. "... _wanted?_ Past tense?" He began to shout louder, until even the echo of his voice drowned out the soft sobbing of the elderly woman.

"Again!" Edward barked at Bear, who began a second attack. Over the crackling of the leaping sparks of electricity, Boxer suddenly appeared from around the corner, calling out for his master. "Mr Carson sir, Mr Carson!" He bellowed in his deep, slurred voice. Leaving Bear to continue the torture, Edward walked far enough out of the duct to hear Boxer clearly. "What's up old chap?"

"Mr Carson, we've lost sight of Jack Ryan - can't finds 'im any place! Nor his two metal bitches. We was watchin' him, real close like! But after he went to Paupers Drop, my men says he vanished! We'd locked down all Bathysphere's and the Express, no way he could 'ave left! But he's gone!" Edward placed an arm on Boxer's to guide him into a more secluded corner, and checked around for anyone close enough to listen in.

"What was he doing in Paupers Drop? Why would he go there?" Edward's stomach began to churn - he hated not knowing what was happening, hated that Jack Ryan was still snooping around the cities slums when he could have chosen to remain in Edward's fine company. Edward realized, he felt distinctly out of touch - out of control.

"He was in old Gracie's place for hours - seemed to have taken quite warmly to the old cow." Boxer growled, disapproving.

"Fucking Grace - why is she always where the trouble is lately?" Edward cursed to himself, "What shit is she stirring?"

"Word is the old gal still has quite the following down in the drop - almost as much as you do. Maybe more, since the accident in Dionysus Park."

Edward ground his teeth and clenched his fists, infuriated that she had been down there, that she had managed to see first hand the controversial decisions he was having to make, because he knew she would have her own opinions - ones that could easily counter his own.

"You Fucking bitch Grace! What are you up to!?" Edward bellowed, before turning from Boxer, and unleashing his own storm of 'Incinerate', straight through the air, past Bear, striking Lily Van Zant. Bear had just finished the fifth session of electrocution, leaving her gasping for breath, when Edward's firestorm finished the job, blasting away her skin and burning up her flesh. He stayed silent for a moment, watching with some lingering whisper of regret as the body broke apart and fell from the chains that had suspended it in the air. Finally, he called over Bear, and addressed both splicers together.

"Something is up, I can feel it. It involves Grace first and foremost - I swear if I didn't need those sorry bastards down in the drop so badly to fix up the power core, I'd flood the fucking place and be done with it! Now I need you both to gather your men, and find me Jack Ryan, now. Tear the city apart if you must - nobody else seems reluctant to. We must not loose control now... otherwise the city is lost. I... _WE..._ are all that stand now between Rapture and it's demise. We cannot let whatever this situation is gather pace... find out what is happening, what they are doing... and stop them."

It was then, that the lights went out. The ventilators stopped. The Pumps stopped. Neptune's Bounty fell into a silent darkness. Splicers near and far could be heard screaming in terror, but none screamed louder than Edward, who boomed above all else with a fiery rage. "What the hell is going on?" As he fumbled through the darkness, stumbling repeatedly to try and find his way out of the water, Edward could only acknowledge his helplessness, and remember the words Lily Van Zant had spoken the day before, "Be careful, the great chain pulled away from Andrew Ryan. It can pull away from you just as easily".


	41. Chapter Forty-One

**Minerva's Den - The Thinker**

The blackout was terrifying, even for those that had caused it. Jack Ryan stood beside the frantic Dr Lydia Wells, who was pouring over readouts as they spilled from the printer, communicating the results of the system-wide purge they had initiated.

"Well... what's happened?" Jack cried out over the alarm bells and booming of the giant machine.

"The system is old, poorly maintained - it will take some time to be sure of the result! But yes... I think we have managed to reset most of the Thinker's systems!" She yelled, periodically breaking from the readouts to wipe the cold sweat from her forehead. The come-down from her ADAM binge the day before was a cruel one, but she had managed to complete the task nevertheless. Lydia Wells had single handedly accomplished in six hours what would have usually taken a team of programmers a month to prepare for.

"And Andrew Ryan's genetic Key? Edward won't be able to access anything with it?" Jack asked,

"In theory no..." Dr Wells stammered, hesitant to ever offer a guarantee - a habit she picked up from when she had worked so closely with Reed Wahl. "I can at least now lock down Minerva's Den, I have complete control over the Den's own functions. Ryan was never able to persuade Wahl or Porter to hand over access to our internal systems." Jack sighed, and collapsed into a chair.

"At least we can pull up the draw bridge for now... but we're about to bring down all manner of hell. Before I take you to meet some people, please gather all figures relating to the cities life span - oxygen levels per district, power supply, heating... we're going to need to know our stuff when we draw Edward to the bargaining table."

**Hepheastus Core**

Edward was marching ahead of Boxer, Bear and the team of jittery, spliced-up engineers who were terrified that their supply of ADAM was about to be cut-off for their incompetence. The group stormed across the landing, until Edward reached the observation platform that overlooked the rotating core in the center of the main cavern. Although it was rusted, filthy and groaning like a drunken whore, the core was still turning steadily and gurgling away.

"See boss! We told you it wasn't us! The core's still pumping, we got us lots of power! It just ain't bein' sent to the right places!" A splicer dressed in heavy overalls and clutching a tool box whined aloud. Edward span around to glare at the man.

"Every second the city doesn't have the power I've promised it, we loose credibility - we loose the people that follow us! Get it fixed, whatever the problem us!"

"Sir," Bear interrupted before the splicer could protest again, "what the grease monkey is saying is, the problem isn't with the heart, it's with the brain telling it where to go..."

Edward went quiet for a moment whilst figuring it out, "The brain... you mean, The Thinker?" The whole group frantically nodded in unison, praying they would escape any repercussions. "Well we'll see about that!" Edward declared as he reached deep into the inside pocket of his freshly laundered velvet jacket, and pulled out his Genetic Key.

The flustered procession had made it half way to Edwards office, when a refreshing hum began to sound from the air vents again, and the lights quickly came back to life, blowing a bulb or two in the process. "What is Wells playing at over there - at least we can fucking see again!" Edward muttered, continuing onward. Bursting into his office, he barked at the three female splicers scrubbing his oak floorboard clean to get out, before proceeding through to the small room on the opposite side, containing the Rapture master controls. He slid the genetic key straight into the access slot, and slammed a fist against the machine as it took time to read the key. When the recognition light finally turned green, he entered the instruction to provide him with an update on the Thinker's mainframe.

"Access to Minerva's Den denied. Please use another key, or contact your Minerva's Den customer service representative. Thank you".

His eye's wide, his limbs trembling, Edward couldn't even bare to look at the console, and turned quickly to face his companions. "Get out."

"But boss, you see now it wasn't our fault? We gets the ADAM still right boss?" The engineer croaked. Edward threw out his hands, casting a fireball from each that struck the floor, charring the wood. "Get the fuck out! Now!" With the exception of Boxer and Bear who knew to stand their ground, the terrified splicers scrambled over each other to be the first out of the door. Still they bickered between themselves, _"We'll still get the ADAM right?"_

Breathing heavily, Edward staggered across his office and threw his weight down into his chair. The office of Andrew Ryan, how his office, had over these last few weeks come to feel like his throne room - the office that granted him the status and power of a worthy replacement for Andrew Ryan. But at that moment, stripped of the power the genetic key gave him, Edward felt terribly naked, vulnerable and frightened. He felt as he had back when he'd first come snooping down in Hephaestus as a lowly, skulking nobody - confused and desperate. Someone was playing against him - he'd suspected it, but now it was certain. Somebody that had evidently gotten to Dr Wells.

"Well son, it looks to me like you're in a tight corner." The voice took him and his two bodyguards by surprise, coming from the shadows where the crooked figure had been waiting the entire time. Edward sat up right in a sharp motion, and in no mood for theatrics, called out the intruder. "Grace, cut the shit and tell me what's going on!"

Grace slowly hauled her tired body out from the small alcove she'd been waiting in, and leaning heavily on her cane, came to stand a meter from Edwards desk. "Edward, my boy, despite our past - you know I'd come to think of you as a friend, maybe even as close to a son as I was ever going to get." She rocked awkwardly as she spoke, and she couldn't seem to control her eyes enough to focus on him.

"Grace - please tell me I'm wrong, tell me that right now." Edward leant forward, pouring himself a much needed glass of Old Tom Whiskey.

"Well, I can safely say it wasn't me that played with your computer personally. But you've been raising more than one or two eyebrows lately son, you've lost your way... just as Ryan did. I tried to warn you this would happen back when we was friends..."

"So you've been mobilising people against me? Against my efforts to save Rapture and everyone in it? You're the veritable Atlas to my Ryan now?" Edward slammed his glass down on the desk.

"You believe what you are doing is for the greater good, I'm sure of that. But like Ryan, when the greater good and your own interests differ, your judgement is proving to be severely impaired, Edward." She confidently accused him, with her soft but firm tone.

"I have done nothing but work to preserve this city the best way I can! I care about everyone down here! And now you're fighting to steal their last chance to survive by fighting me..."

"No son, you can't see what I see. You drowned Dionysus Park... killed my Melissa, you drowned Ryan Amusements." She began.

"All accidents, accidents I tell you! It was necessary to flood those areas's to save those with larger populations! Whatever I did, I did for the people!" Edward screamed across the desk.

"For the people? The people that slug away to rebuild your city for you, then go home to their shared bunks crammed into Paupers Drop like sardines, while you swan about Mercury Suites in a fresh suit drinking Worley 1948?"

Edward threw his glass this time, Whiskey and all, across the room. Grace wasn't sure if he had been aiming at her or not. "I was building something for them to aspire to! To work for! That is what Rapture is all about!"

"No son, you were playing Andrew Ryan, playing king of the castle. When you gave up being the Edward Carson I used to know in favour of being Ryan junior, you forced my hand to become 'your Atlas' as you describe me. Ryan's great chain philosophy died with him. Rapture no longer has the luxury of being a philosophical playground Edward - this is about live or die. Whilst you're feathering yourself a nice little nest and convincing yourself its for the good of the people, the people that you need to fill your city, are dying out - many by your own hand."

Edward fought to come back with a clever reply, but to his horror, the words caught in his throat, and for a second that felt like a century, he hesitated. Grace noticed it, he noticed it.

"See boy - you're not so drunk on power yet that you can't see it for yourself. You know I'm right..." Grace smiled, and held out a hand towards him in a gesture of compassion. As Lily Van Zant had done, Grace had humiliated Edward even further, and his heart hurt with rage. In defiance he pushed her words aside, and erupted up out of his chair, flipping over the desk entirely. It rolled over and struck Grace, sending her frail frame crashing to the floor. Grace cried out in pain, and began to grasp at her hip.

Edward came bearing down on her like a triumphant lion about to take the first bite out of its prey. "Fuck you Grace! Fuck you bitch!" He spat on her, and blind with hatred, kicked her sharply, her cries of agony only making him even angrier, after her vulnerable nature that had led him to trust her once, had played him for a fool - not this time!

"Tell me who you sent to Minerva's Den! Tell me what little whelp you've brainwashed this time!" Edward realised as the words left his quivering lips that he already knew the answer - it would be the man that had been seen spending time with her only to vanish from sight soon afterwards.

"Jack Ryan will be your reckoning Edward! He'll bring you down and save the sisters! He'll save everybody!" As her final cries confirmed what he already knew to be true, that Jack Ryan had aligned himself with Grace over him, Edward summed up a powerful dose of Telekenisis, and threw Grace's broken body into the air, slamming her hard against the ceiling, before pulling her back down faster than gravity could carry her, straight into the wooden floor. Blood burst out of her mouth across the new carpet he'd had laid only that morning.

Grace Holloway never spoke again, but in her final moments of life, managed to fix her gaze upon Edward, making direct eye contact with him at last. Edward looked away, as he brought down the fatal blow of his foot that broke her skull.


	42. Chapter Forty-Two

**Paupers Drop - Fishbowl Diner**

Jack Ryan, accompanied by his twp Big Sisters and a rather sheepish looking Dr Wells stepped through the doorway out into the open chasm that house the Fishbowl Diner. Despite the hundreds of men and women inside, many spliced out of their minds, an eerie hush fell over the entire hall, so much so that Jack could even hear the faint gurgling of the ocean overhead.

"What y'all gone and done now?" Finally one voice called out, a fat, sluggish splicer who clearly originated from Texas. "Thought y'all were s'posed to be helpin' us, not undoin' all the fine work Carson and his boys been doin' lately!" A few more of the crowd began to cheer him on.

Jack held out his arms and begged for quiet once more, before trying to speak over the last few mumbles. "Friends - please bare with us. Grace sent me on a mission, to seek out the truth about Edward Carson's reign over Rapture. To check upon his methods and dealings before he gathers more momentum and you... _we,_ have no choice but to allow him complete control over us all. I need to speak with Grace immediately." Jack began to continue forward, Beth and Ellie striding ahead to clear a path, when suddenly, the massive exterior doors overhead heaved open with great effort and a deafening grinding of aged metal, and an Atlantic Express Car came racing through at immense speed, so fast that its coupling to the tracks was sparking and breaking loose. With no attempt at slowing, the express carriage ploughed straight into the back of another parked Express Carriage that had hung undisturbed over the diner for the last decade. Both disintegrated upon impact, smashing open and careening off the tracks down into the crowds below.

With screams and panic, a wave of terrified splicers began to rage through the hall away from the scene of the crash, where almost twenty unsuspecting souls had already been crushed beneath the falling wreckage. The rush gave way to a stampede, and the mindless, hysterical crowds began to trample those not quick enough to find their feet and clear the way.

Saved from the same fate only by his two towering, metal-clad companions, Jack fought against the tide, rushing towards the crash in a vain effort to try and save any survivors. "I don't know why you bother - nobody here would try to save you!" Dr Wells cried out as she clung to his jacket, struggling to keep up among the crowd. Jack knew she was right, but he couldn't shake his natural instinct - his _human_ instinct, to help. Everyone in that room used to have it once, but had lost it involuntarily to their ADAM addiction.

They reached the smoldering wreckage, it was impossible to tell the two carriages apart they were so twisted and broken, the second carriage having actually entered the first upon impact. Having exhausted what was left of their ADAM, Beth and Ellie could only help by manually lifting the pieces of wreckage, and dragging out the bodies of the splicers that had been caught beneath it all. As they dug deeper, Jack was able to climb up and actually get inside what was left of the second carriage's interior - he pushed aside the leather cushions and shattered mahogany paneling, trying to find any sign of who had been travelling in the second carriage. Even he had to think to himself " _Christ, this would be so much easier with some ADAM..."_

Jack had been able to pull away the access door into the control booth, and found it to be crushed, but clearly empty. "There was nobody driving, it was set on automatic - must have been a short circuit triggered when we reset The Thinker?" He called out to Dr Wells, and a small crowd of splicers that had overcome the initial herd mentality and let their panic subside in favor of their curiosity.

"No way Jack - I worked on the initial installation of the express systems with Prentice Mill's engineers. The Thinker checked routes and green lit access to tracks once it had confirmed they were clear, but the carriages still required someone to manually hit the go button - even if they set it on autopilot, it had to be set manually." Dr Wells informed him, pulling out a sneaky bottle of Chechnya Vodka she'd kept in her labcoat pocket and taking a gulp to try and steady her nerves - she was not comfortably among so many people - for years she had locked herself away with her machines, and preferred it.

Retreating from the claustrophobic confines of the compressed control booth, Jack was about to leap back out from the wreck, when his foot came down on something soft and spongy beneath a large shred of red velvet that had come away from the ceiling. Reaching down he pulled the fabric away, and recoiled in horror. The face of Grace Holloway, at least he was fairly sure it was Grace, looked up with bloodshot, lifeless eyes. Her face was smashed inwards, and smothered with blood. Jack reached down carefully, and with a hand under each arm, gently pulled her heavy corpse from the tangled mess of steel and wood, and dragged her down onto the tiled floor. The watching splicers gasped, and two broke out into uncontrolled, maniacal sobs.

"Who is this?" Dr Wells asked, perplexed by the attention this old woman was receiving over any of the other thousands of dead one could walk past in the corridor on a daily basis.

"Grace Holloway - she was the one who sent me over to see you. She was governor of Paupers Drop during Sofia Lamb's rule - a true believe in the Rapture family, in family at all." Jack sighed, brushing Grace's hair, knotted with blood, from her face. "Why on earth was she in that express carriage? And why didn't she stop? Did the brakes fail?" Jack asked openly to anyone listening, as he looked up at the now-broken railway overhead.

"ahhh shit... guess I'm too late to speak to Gracey now, eh?" A strange, wiry little voice spoke out from behind the crowd. Jack stood up and beckoned the newcomer forward. Stanely Poole pushed past the gawping splicers and brushed his sweaty hair back. "Stan Poole - at your service Mr Ryan." He held out a greasy, filthy hand. Jack politely refused to take it, but stepped closer.

"You have me at a disadvantage sir - you seem to know me?" He asked, instead brushing Grace's blood off his hands onto his trousers.

"Everyone that has survived this long in Rapture knows you Mr Ryan, don't get flattered so easy. I used to be one of Rapture's foremost paparazzi - Rapture Tribune." He smiled, displaying two rows of rotten, brown teeth.

"That rag? We only had use for it to wipe our asses with in the Den..." Dr Wells sneered,

Stanley gave her the most fleeting of glances; "You ain't the only ones sweetheart". He then yanked his camera from his coat pocket, and held it out.

"Seein' how Grace has checked out, I'm guessin' she'd have me deliver this to you. You weren't the only guy she sent out on a scoutin' mission."


	43. Chapter Forty-Three

**Arcadia - Upper Rolling Hills**

Edward waited until one of the new gardeners had wiped the bench before he placed himself down upon it, and began to take in the revitalizing efforts. One thing about spliced up females, was how fiercely protective they became over whatever they considered their property - and so it had been a stroke of genius to convince them Arcadia was _their_ garden. They worked tirelessly tending to the plants and gardens, and barked harshly at the weedy little men that had been allocated to tree cutting and pruning duties. Certainly there had been an accident or two, as was to be expected when having to pay your workforce in ADAM, but they had been kept to a minimum. The worst had happened just that very morning, when an older woman had hurled a swarm of bee's from her palms at a younger man that she had accused of ogling at her breasts. Edward had chuckled for the first time in days when he had been presented with the perpetrator, as her breasts were perhaps the least eye-catching of all her bodily extremities, and far smaller than the majority of her tumors and blisters.

Regardless of the incidents, Arcadia had come along splendidly. He recalled when he had first arrived in Rapture back in 1946, and that first stroll he and Sheridan had taken that first evening, which had led them straight to Arcadia. The city hadn't been anywhere near as large then as it eventually became, and so Arcadia had been very much a go-to destination back then, rather than a simple commodity. How exciting life had been back then, and how hopeful. In many ways, he missed the innocence of his youth, back when he had been too timid to make the simplest of decisions, and had relied upon Sheridan to make every single one.

Boxer appeared from behind a far cluster of oak tree's, weaving his way between two splicers trimming the lawn, before striding up to Edward. He reached out with a dripping wet bottle of Worley Wine. The label was sodden and the ink had run, but it appeared to be a 1958 vintage.

"Heaven's old boy, how did you come across this?"

"Well, you told me to find you more wine. I did." Boxer seemed less obliging somehow, grouchy and fed up. "The water had gotten back into the winery after that creepy bitch Wells re-started your computer and stopped the pumps, it was almost neck deep. I had to send in another splicer... same as last time though. Lost him after the third round trip..."

Edward sighed with frustration and momentarily turned away from the bottle he had just opened. "For fuck sake..." He didn't wait much longer before he took the first gulp. "Any word from Bear?"

"Yeah, and not a good one. He lost six of his boys to lousy diving suits, and not one of them managed to get inside Minerva's Den. Place is locked up tight. Only solution would be to have a Big Daddy take a window off - but until _you_ get control back over the Thinker from inside the Den, the metal men aren't listening to a goddamn word we say."

Edward cursed again under his breath, "But you've stationed guards around it?"

"All I could spare, but I didn't think you'd want me to take men from guarding Hephaestus - we're running low on men with all their marbles. I ain't trusting splicers with anything as serious as security."

"Fine, fine." Edward had heard enough bad news. He took another, larger gulp of wine.

Without The Thinker, the work had stalled on sectioning off the city, and he no longer had the computer estimates on how long the city now had, nor did he have any information on anything. He'd lost Grace Holloway - not just as a respected friend, but he'd lost her allegiance and her trust. He re-lived those final moments with her in his office over and over as he stared aimlessly among the Tree's of Arcadia, and swung violently and erratically between regret and surging anger at the woman. The emotions deepened as he drank further.

So without Grace, without Wells or her damned computer, Edward was stuck, and he knew it. He had the power in Hephaestus, that was a trump card. He had the oxygen too - Arcadia, that was another. The problem was, whilst he could distribute the products of both, he no longer had computer control over either. Wells and Jack Ryan could turn either off in a second, and there was bugger-all he could do about it. Not that he could flaunt it too wildly, but he also had the only source of fresh ADAM in Rapture too - now that appeared to be his only pawn left worth playing on the chess board. He just had to figure out the best way how.

He could use it to blackmail the splicers into doing his bidding, that might work. But if Jack started dishing out this ADAM Cure, who knew how long the ADAM would be effective. He could use ADAM to splice up the few men he had, and try to storm whichever castle Jack and Wells had barricaded themselves inside - but the unknown factor there, was he had no idea how many of Grace Holloway's loyalists would now be switching their allegiance to Jack - Edward didn't want to encourage any confrontation that would clarify just how outmatched he may now be.

Edward threw his head into his hands and groaned. ' _Oh Andrew - how did you hold out against Fontaine so long?'_

Then, something struck him. It had been Fontaine, or rather _Atlas_ 's army of splicers that had brought Rapture - and Ryan, to their knee's. Splicer's wanted ADAM. The one thing Edward had, was a shitload of ADAM. And what had Ryan used to combat the threat? More splicers, controlled by ADAM and mental suggestion.

"Boxer - last estimate we got before things turned south - how many splicers are still roaming free? The one's that didn't respond to our efforts to re-home them all down in the drop?" The large man scratched his stubbly chin. "Uh, last count from the Thinker was around a couple of hundred, maybe three to four hundred? But they are animals boss, gone full bye-bye. They aren't any use to anyone."

Edwards face dropped, and he felt his stomach ache at the thought, but he knew what he had to do - all he had left to do. "It's that animal we're going to need."


	44. Chapter Forty-Four

**Paupers Drop - Limbo Room**

Many hadn't been interested in listening, and already all the uncertainty with the loss of Grace Holloway and rumours surrounding Edward Carson had been enough to push some splicers into their old habits of attacking each other and pillaging for more food.

Jack had been able to flaunt himself as the 'incarnation of god' as much as possible to those still clinging to the ramblings of the late Father Simon Wales, and drawn them to hear him speak. The rest of the crowd was either those loyal to Grace, or those with enough of their humanity left to be suspicious.

He climbed up over the front of the warped, rotten stage, and stood to face the crowds beside the carefully laid out body of Grace Holloway.

"Many of you are scared, and confused. Believe me when I say I understand that - Rapture, is a scary, and dangerous place. But you have all survived to this point, and whilst that is to your own credit, I feel many of you will agree, your protection during the Lamb years came down to this woman here - Grace Holloway. Without ever touching a drop of ADAM, without turning to drink or any other vice, she sheltered her flock from the rest of the city. Hours before her death, Grace was still working to safeguard her family - all of you, from a third term of lies and oppression!" He began to call out so all could hear.

"Ryan lied to you all when he brought you down here, he told you you'd all be millionaires - and conveniently forgot to mention that some would be left behind to scrub the floors. When faced with the challenges he sought to escape, Ryan betrayed his own principles - censoring artists like Culpepper, killing anyone with an opposing opinion in the name of 'security'. Then you had Lamb - who spouted off about the importance of family, of unity - but sacrificed the importance of individuality and freedome, even going so far as to curtail her own _family's_ freedom, but incarcerating her own daughter!" Jack was relieved to see the nods of agreement and understanding, and a few more faces appearing through the door.

"Now you have Edward Carson - a man of the people, who has made you all the same promises, just wrapped with a different bow. Nobody wanted to trust him with Rapture, and all of you, more than I did. I want nothing more than for my fathers city to recover, and to thrive, and for a while all of us, including me, really thought Edward Carson was the man to do it. But Grace - in her wisdom, chose to pursue caution over dreams. She saw Edward for who he really is, and yesterday she sent me, and Stanley Poole, to opposite ends of the city to gather the proof, that Edward is no better than Ryan, Fontaine, or Lamb."

"What proof?" Someone cried out; Jack first gestured to Dr Wells, who took a step closer from the side of the stage.

"My name is Dr Lydia Wells, Senior programmer in Minerva's Den. I have witnessed Edward's complicity in the murder of Rapture civilians. It is true, that he chose to flood buildings and entire districts, whilst aware people were still inside them. He pushed the workers down in Hephaestus to take risks, which cost further lives. All of it can be proven, The Thinker holds all the records." She had started to tear up, as she confessed her own sins as much as she confessed Carsons.

Jack then gestured for Stanley Poole to speak next, who was initially met with a number of boo's and thrown bottles. "Please, I beg you, let him speak." Jack shouted out over the cacophony.

"So ah, yeah high guys." Stanley's words caught in his throat as he faced a crowd wearing an angry frown, every one of them begging for his blood for what he did to Eleanor Lamb and Grace Holloway. "Grace forgave me, just so's ya know. She sent me on a mission to make up for what I did. I came back from Point Prometheus this morning, with photographs of what's going on up there. They're making little Sisters again - to harvest ADAM - he's distilling it by the tank load..." The very mention of ADAM made the splicer crowd wide-eyed, many drooling and gasping, in desperate hunger for more ADAM. Convincing many of them that renewed ADAM manufacturing was a bad thing would take quite some effort.

"But the point is, he denied making it. He point blank refused the notion that he was making any more!"

Jack stepped in; "He even told me, that he would help distribute the cure for ADAM. I want to free you all of this addiction, and take everyone back up to the surface! Let you see the sun again! He promised to help with that, all the while he was mass-producing ADAM with every intention of keeping you addicted - keeping you slaves to his whim." Jack couldn't stop his own anger at Edward's lies from shining through. The crowd seemed to divide almost instantly, half screaming that they didn't want a cure for ADAM, just wanted more of it. The other half, the quieter yet larger half, began to mutter about the possibility of leaving the city, and freeing themselves from ADAM addiction.

One splicer yelled: "There is no cure for ADAM, you're full of horse shit buddy!" Jack gestured towards Beth and Ellie, both standing quietly at the back.

"Then explain those two - both clean as a whistle. Not a drop of ADAM in them." He gleamed with pride as they both came forward, and let the lights show off their clear skin and rosy cheeks.

"They're freaks, weak, plasmidless freaks!" The same splicer spat at them in disgust; but Jack was having none of it. "They are free. Clear headed. Rational. This cure is the culmination of many years of Brigid Tenenbaums efforts. She sent me down here with this cure, and I still intend to give it to anyone that wants it. Take the cure - and you won't need to work for Edward, to work for nothing. Take the cure now, and we don't have to worry about rebuilding Hephaestus or Arcadia before we all drown, we can just leave, take the Bathysphere's and leave! We've already unlocked them! Please, talk among yourselves, spread the word. I will be waiting in the Fishbowl Diner ready to help anyone that wants to be cured."

He quickly stepped down off the stage, and beckoned over Ellie and Beth. "I'm certain Edward won't stay silent for long after this, we're bound to have ruffled his feathers. Go - take some of the cure vials, and seek out as many Big and little sisters as you can. Bring them home... we're leaving today!" He smiled, as he handed Beth a satchel full of the serum.

As he turned away from the chattering crowd, Jack's sorrowful gaze fell upon the twisted remains of Grace again. He wished he'd known more of her story, and known her longer himself. When a strange, slender man with a balding head began prodding her and poking the bloody gash down her skull, Jack stormed over in quick defense of her corpse. "Excuse me, what on earth are you doing? Get away from her!"

The strange man stared back through thin-rimmed spectacles with little to no emotional response to Jacks demands. "You say she died in that crash?" He asked, coldly. Jack nodded, placing a preventative arm between the man and Grace. "That's right, we all saw it."

"Dr Hollcroft's the name, James Hollcroft. I used to run a little place down here after that slant-eyed bastard Suchong had me turfed out of his laboratory." He complained, bitterly.

"...and?" Jack snapped back.

"And I'm telling you sir, that dear old Gracey here did not die in that crash. She's been dead for at least a day."


	45. Chapter Forty-Five

**Point Prometheus - Bathysphere Loading Bay**

"But why could you possibly need it all at once? This is almost a month's work you're taking all at once, this should be conserved and utilized at a steady pace - you could placate nearly a thousand splicers with this amount for 6 months! What could you possibly need it all for?" Dr Petrov was almost begging now after an hours worth of demanding an explanation.

Edward had offered up all he was willing to give, that "It was for a confidential project, that would ensure the cities ongoing survival".

The four fishing submersibles that had been being worked on down in Neptunes Bounty, were all docked now in Point Prometheus's dry dock facility, with their vast cargo holds being hurriedly filled with the large, glowing vats of ADAM. His men, lead by the ever faithful Boxer and Bear, held the scientists under a sharp watch, their machine guns and shot guns all held at the ready, to discourage any disobedience.

"I told you we couldn't trust this man!" Dr Violet Arenberg burst through a side door and pointed straight at Edward. "We have been working our asses off, for nothing,cutting open little girls again, all on your say so... and now this? Whats it all for?" She bit, punching Dr Petrov in the chest when he tried to interrupt and calm her down.

"All I ask if that you trust me, have I not delivered on my promises so far? I've given you all heat, power, security! I've even had your bedrooms cleaned and fresh linen laid on your beds... I've given you everything." Edward snapped, walking away from her to inspect one of the submarines more closely.

"Are the external hoses ready?" He called out to Bear. "Yes sir, we'll fit them just before we leave."

"Hoses?" Arenberg echoed, "What are those for, you going to piss it all away into the sea?" Edward tried to ignore her, but her insubordinate persistence was beginning to irritate him. He span back on her, stopping her in her tracks with a jolt. He met her gaze defiantly, before looking across at Boxer. With a simple, swift gesture of his hand, he pointed across the room to Dr Petrov, and nodded once. In obedience, Boxer raised the bolt gun he was carrying, and fired a single bolt directly into Petrov's forehead. The man didn't know what hit him, but fell immediately to the floor, dead.

Arenberg screamed in horror at her fallen friend, before trying to swing a kick at Edward, which missed. "Now listen Arenberg - I had him shot because you are the better scientist so I'm told. But make no mistakes, if you continue to harass me, you will be next!" He felt his face go red and perspire with anger, enough for the doctor to fall silent, and begin to cry as she scurried away. Edward looked back at the body of the man he'd just had executed, and swore to himself. Why were these people so foolish, why were they making him suffer by forcing him to do such terrible things? How he hated them for it.

He made sure he took comfort for himself in knowing, that despite these dreadful things these people were forcing him to do, that he was still a good enough person to try and save them anyway. What other man would go through such hardships to save such people as the insane, moronic citizens of Rapture?

**Paupers Drop**

**Fishbowl Diner - Kitchen**

Jack had handed over distribution of the ADAM cure to Dr Wells whilst he took a personal five minutes in the kitchen of the diner. There, he repeatedly kicked in the side of an oven, as he let his sorrow out. His mind raced with the smiles and laughter he had shared with Edward, how he had been drawn in to it all! Had Edward been lying to him the whole time? Had every smile and promise been fake? Was he a murdering asshole from the very beginning? If he had been, that was all the worse, for Jack had found him a most enticing man - a friend to be cherished at the least. Jack had had enough of friends turning out to be sonsofbitches down here in this shit hole.

How Jack found himself wishing he hadn't stopped the cities self-destruct sequence back in 1960 when his father had activated it - if he'd only been strong enough to fight Fontaine's hold over him, he could have let the Rapture nightmare end then and there. It would have prevented all these people's suffering that they had gone on to endure over the last ten years. Too many people had spoken about breaking the cycle, too many thought they were the solution to Rapture's problems. The real problem, was Rapture itself. Through necessity, its legacy was suffering and death. As painful as it was for anyone to admit, the city was not worth saving, Jack could see it now - poor Grace had tried to tell him that.

With a stronger resolve than ever before, Jack left the Diner, and made his way up to Grace's apartment in the Sinclair Deluxe.


	46. Chapter Forty-Six

**Rapture**

Were you to look upon the great city of Rapture at that moment, you would never have believed the mounting pressure within its walls. For outside, there was only peace. Much of the city was a ruin now, dark towers stood crumbling, resembling more the rocky seabed that surrounded the city than man-made structures. There was no noise, no motion, just the endless, deep darkness in every direction. The city lights that could once be seen from almost a mile away, had died, and you would be upon the city center itself before you could make out the occasional dim glow through a window or skylight.

Across this serene, calm scene, suddenly a number of objects broke the stillness. Several dark cylinders that ran without lights moved over the city center, traversing the length of Rapture without a single running light, without a sound. Inside each, a crew of two or three men and women sat at the controls, making as much effort to remain undetectable as they were to avoid the crumbling buildings around them. Behind the fleet of fishing submarines, a private 1959 Stingray Bathysphere hung back, observing the fleets movements whilst keeping some distance. Edward sat in the center of the large seating area, whilst Boxer sat to the side handling the controls.

"I've got to tell ya boss, I'm not sure this going to end well... not for any one." Boxer chirped up suddenly after half an hours travelling. Edward had been absorbed in his own thoughts, staring out ahead and watching the ruined city pass beneath him. "What are you on about?"

"I'm just tellin' ya. I gave you my loyalty because you had all the right ideas, and I liked your thinkin'. But this ain't how any of us pictured things turnin'. You have my loyalty as long as you keep your head above water sir - but the moment things turn south, I'm jumpin' ship. Just think it's right ya know."

Edward had a thought to berate his bodyguard for such insolence, and had he been backed up by Bear and a group of his usual splicers then maybe he would have done, but alone with the brute of a man in a confined space, Edward knew he wouldn't stand a chance against Boxer. The tension his words created made Edward sink back deeper into his seat, and if he could have sunk all the way through and out the back of the Bathysphere he would have. Once more - Edward felt small and out of control. It was happening already - those he trusted were preparing to betray him.

"I'm right behind ya when it comes to killin' off troublesome splicers - they're pigs. But what you did to the old girl - that was real low. I won't be part of much more of that." Boxer continued. He seemed to be growing braver now he'd finally come out with what he was thinking.

"Well you're doubts are ill advised, my friend. When we've won this city, when we have it under control, remember who you'll be answering to. Because I will most certainly remember who I could count on." Edward made his voice bold and strong, but he was thankful Boxer had to keep his eyes on the ocean ahead, because he was shaking like a leaf. The awkward silence was broken when the onboard radio came on automatically.

"People of Rapture - to all who are listening! I offer you an escape! We have a cure for your addiction to ADAM, and we are leaving for the surface! Rapture is dying, the city is lost - but you can still save yourselves! We welcome everyone now to Paupers Drop - the Express is operating, the Metro System is online! Come now, be cured! Be saved! You can see the sun again today! You can escape with us!" It was undeniably Jack Ryan's voice, broadcasting on every Rapture Radio frequency. Edward grimaced as he waited for the message to spur on a further rant from Boxer, but he remained silent.

Edward wondered how many had heard the message, how many were still picking at scraps and squatting in corners cross his city when the message had rung out? Initially, he began to panic, for they were the very people upon whom his plan now depended, but his concern quickly turned to an out-loud laugh. "Oh Jack!" He smiled, "You've only served to hasten your own defeat!" He continued to chuckle to himself, curling up and throwing his arms around himself in delight like a child that had tasted chocolate for the first time.

"Boss?" Boxer questioned, confused.

"The fool has told everyone in the city where to go - and that is exactly where we want them all to go too!"


	47. Chapter Forty-Seven

**Pauper's Drop - Bathysphere Station**

"Dr Wells...Lydia? Are you receiving?" Jack fiddled with the frequency knob on his shortwave radio. Dr Wells had left to return to Minerva's Den, with Jack's instructions for The Thinker to be tasked with sending every functional Bathysphere to Paupers Drop, and hold them in a queue ready to be laden with ex-splicers as soon as those that had accepted the cure were back on their feet enough to make the journey back up to the surface.

As he continued to nervously listen to static, he watched as two small, withered men clambered over the Bathysphere currently bobbing freely in the small entrance pool, frantically trying to engage the emergency release on the door so they could power it up and re-stabilize it. "Fucking thing! These have never worked how they was s'posed to!" One crowed, hitting the hull out of anger with a wrench.

Behind him, Jack could hear the groans and whining of the twenty-six men and women that had been the first to willingly accept the ADAM cure. It seemed to hit the adults much harder than it had the Big Sisters, as Jack had suspected it might. The Big Sisters, were still technically children, no more than fourteen or fifteen, and having been raised as some of Tenenbaums little sisters, had been the most recipient to having ADAM in their blood without it resulting in too much trauma to the mind and body. The adults however, most had been heavily abusing their bodies with ADAM for almost twenty years, had all suffered extreme mutations and mental collapse, and so the immediate eradication of ADAM from their bodies now was deeply traumatic. They reeled on the station benches and blanketed floor, sweating, vomiting and cursing themselves for being 'fooled' into taking the cure.

Jack had made sure that those receiving the cure were immediately transferred away from the rest of the population, for fear the sight of the suffering caused by the cure might put many of the others off. He wasn't sure how any of these people would react when they began to see clearly again - for the mutations many had would of course be permanent, and even with the attention of the best surgeons up on the surface, many would still resemble a Picasso. Maybe Tenenbaum could help them, given time.

"Lydia - can you hear me? Are you in the Den yet?" He returned to tinkering with the radio. There was a crackled reply, too distorted initially to tell who it was.

"Yes... I am here." Finally her distinctly British accent came through. "I can hear you..." She spoke again.

"Great! Well done! Have you made it to the Thinker? How any Bathysphere's can it get down here to the Drop?" The radio fell silent for a short while, long enough for Jack to wonder what she was doing at the other end. From what he had seen of Minerva's Den, he pictured her climbing through small access vents surrounded by electrical cables.

Finally, she responded again. "Yes... I am here. The main door was malfunctioning, I had to access The Thinker via the pit - sorry it took me some time." Her voice was steady and nervous, lacking the faint glimmer of hope she had left with.

"Is everything ok Lydia?" He checked, noticing her subdued demeanor, hoping it was simply a result of having to climb through whatever 'the pit' was. He was answered only with static.

**Minerva's Den**

**Office of Dr Lydia Wells**

Her tired, boney hands were trembling as they lay out on the desk in front of her, both from fear, and from a burning rage that was telling her to repel, to fight back and see through what she had promised to do. But her life until now had been focused on the outcomes of equations, and she hadn't made a single one the last few minutes that had seen her successfully fight her way out of this deadlock against Bear - one of Edward Carson's enforcers, and his six armed men, one of whom held an upgraded Pistol loaded with anti-personnel rounds, to the back of her skull. She had managed to evade their outer perimeter at first, despite her clumsy use of a diving suit with which she was far from familiar, but they had caught her with the simplest of traps - a trap bolt set across the doorway into Central Operations, the damn thing had nearly taken her leg off.

Bear was stood in the corner, on the radio to Edward. "Yeah Boss, you don't need to worry about the doctor getting caught in the action down in the drop - we got 'er right here. Right where ya want 'er." He cheered, winking at her across the room.

"Excellent! You get her to work straight away on granting me access to Rapture Central Computing again, with unlimited access to The Thinker. We'll sweep up the mess down here." Edward signed off from his transmission.

"I don't know what he thinks he can do - without access to anything, he can't harm Jack Ryan, or anyone down in the drop." Lydia sneered, trying to make the most out of the one card she held. "Pumps, power, they still belong to me for the time being. No matter how hard you press that pistol to my head, re-programming takes time. Time Edward doesn't have - but time enough for the evacuation to begin as planned. You could go with them you know..." She suggested, cautiously.

There was a slight hesitation from Bear, as he and his men exchanged the most fleeting of glances. "As lovely as that sounds lady - it 'ain't gunna happen. And Ryan junior hasn't got another five minutes left - think he can clear out all them fuck-heads in five minutes?" He laughed.

"Five minutes? Until what?" She couldn't help but let her panic show. "What can you do that doesn't need the computers? You wouldn't have the manpower to cause enough of a flood... or..." she began to frantically try and figure out what Edward could have planned for Paupers Drop.


	48. Chapter Forty-Eight

**Paupers Drop - Bathysphere Station**

The Bathysphere sat in the dock had finally been restored and powered up, and was sat on an even keel with its door wide open ready to welcome its first passengers. It was a decent step towards the ultimate goal, but to Jack, things still seemed too slow. He couldn't raise Lydia Wells on the radio still, and the vast majority of the occupants of the drop were still holding back from taking the ADAM cure - lingering, watching, but not quite ready to take the step. Since he had put out the call across the city from Grace Holloway's radio up in her apartment, he had expected some sort of retaliation from Edward Carson, who would now be entirely clear on his breaking away from their agreement, and undoubtedly, extremely upset by it. Whilst Jack was relieved that whatever retribution that would be forth-coming was yet to hit them, he was unnerved by how long it was taking to start sending people top-side.

Sitting down for a restful moment, still cradling the short-wave radio in his hands, he looked out through one of the large windows out onto the city beyond. As opposed to so many views across the city that looked down upon it, every angle from Paupers Drop was looking up - and this made the buildings seem twice as high, and the city even more vast. He wondered where out there the two sisters were - Ellie and Beth, who had placed such trust in him so quickly. He hoped they would still be able to hold their own out in the city without the advantage of Plasmids, on their quest to round up as many of the little sisters as they could.

"My Ryan sir, we've got company at last!" Stanley Poole came hobbling into the station, from his post monitoring security cameras. "Two express cars are arrivin', full of splicers! Many more are scramblin' down the corridors, ventilation shafts - sewage pipes! You name it, they're crawlin' down it!" He grinned, but it was a grin of polite pleasure at the positive reaction to Jack's tannoy speech, and also one of foreboding, that this could turn very bad, very quickly. Jack placed a hand on Stanley's hunched shoulder.

"Don't worry - there's only one thing we have that they could possibly want, and that's a way out of this rust-bucket town. They're not going to get that by causing any trouble now are they?" He smiled.

As he watched Stanley's expression turn more positive, and a sparkle of trust develop in his eyes, something over his shoulder caught Jack's attention. He looked past Stanley - out through the large window behind him. Something was flashing, a little red light bleeping periodically, growing closer. "What is that?" He murmured, passing Stanley to take a closer look.

"Christ! That's a torpedo!" Stanley screamed, before clutching Jack's jumper with his hands clasped like an eagles talons, before dragging him back away from the glass. As they ran, Jack began to slow and reach for all the people spread out through the station in various stages of the recovery process. "We've got to get them out! Run! Run all of you!"

Stanley wouldn't let him slow, but with all his might heaved Jack out and through the doorway. The men and women left in the station didn't even hear Jack's pleadings, before the torpedo struck the Bathysphere station at incredible speed. The giant glass windows exploded inwards under the impact, and the ryanium columns collapsed, beneath a wall of ocean that instantly came hurtling down onto everyone and everything below. The weight of the tsunami crushed the station, tore away the walls and ripped up the floors, churning bodies and wreckage in a violent maelstrom. Jack could only watch in horror, as the creature-like flood tore through the chamber towards him like a hungry predator, before the securis door came thundering down in front of him, closing off the torrent. He leapt as the crash of the water striking the other side of the door caused it to bow and stretch under the weight and pressure. A few bolts even popped, letting out high-pressure jets of sea water. The crowds behind Jack in the main atrium of Paupers Drop screamed as they heard the collapse of the Station chamber, and again began to swarm to the corner of the hall furthest away.

"You're not going anywhere Jack! You're not taking my people away from me! Do you hear me? This is Rapture, _my_ city! These are _my_ people! Only I decide what happens in the next chapter of Rapture's great story!" The speakers rang out from everywhere with Edwards voice, just as they had used to fill the halls with Ryan's philosophies, Lamb's teachings and Holloway's condemnations.

His face aghast, Jack turned to everyone, who in turn were looking to him. "We need to get out of here - now! I don't know what's going on, but we need to clear Pauper's Drop, now!" Jack stuttered, thinking on his feet. He'd been caught with his pants down, just as he had feared. "Run!" He bellowed. As the crowds began to panic, and race for the exits, every Securis door in the drop fell into place, and locked shut.

"Christ! He's got control back!" Stanley cried, his eyes wild with fright. Jack wanted to reply, he wanted to coordinate their next move - but his mind was frozen, his feet like lead. "How... how?" He asked, over and over.

**Minerva's Den - The Office of Dr Lydia Wells**

She began to cry, and stared accusingly at her hands as they hovered over the keyboard, stared at them as a reluctant killer would after having used them to plunge a knife into his victim. "What have I done?" She shrieked, and cried harder.

"You did as you were told. Smart girl." Bear quipped without much care, leaning over her and checking the system in front of them did indeed confirm that she had locked everyone inside Paupers Drop.

This was all too familiar - locking people up. She'd done it once too often, with fatal consequences. Dr Lydia Wells had always been a cold, clinical woman - void of emotion for the most part, especially since the fall of Rapture. But as her tears ran, she noticed how warm they were. The warmth of her tears against her cold, damp skin, made her realize that at that very moment, she was now perhaps the most _human_ she had ever been. What would a human do now?

"At least behind locked doors, you're men can't get to them so easily." She triumphantly announced. "But all I did was manually shut the doors, you still don't have access to the systems, and you never will." She announced, before spinning around in her chair to defiantly stare Bear down.

"Yeah? What makes you so damned sure all of a sudden? We'll make you sing like a bird..." He chuckled as he snarled and spat at her. Her smile, however - that suddenly crept across Lydia Well's lips, gave him pause. It was the most baffling thing she could have done, and it worried him.

In a single, swift maneuver, Lydia Wells slipped out from her seat towards the nearest of her six captors. He barely noticed her coming, before she yanked his pistol from his holster and rolled away across the floor.

"Don't shoot! Don't Shoot her!" Bear barked at his men as they drew their weapons and took aim at the old woman laying across the cold office floor. Her smile grew wider, and she winked at Bear once. Then she turned the pistol into her mouth, and pulled the trigger.


	49. Chapter Forty-Nine

**Paupers Drop**

Jack stood on the roof of the dilapidated Fishbowl Diner, his hands clasping his pounding head as he looked around the hall, half in a daze of disbelief, as he tried to think of a way to get everyone out. How quickly everything had unraveled! He'd snatched his satchel from inside the Diner and reclaimed his supply of the ADAM cure - once they'd evacuated the drop, then he'd be able to set up somewhere else.

The colossal crash came from overhead, leading many to believe the entire building was about to cave in. Hundreds hunched over and poised ready for the plume of sea water to come thundering down. Yet all that fell was chunks of concrete. A second crash came, more like a heavy thud. Everyone looked up to the ceiling, where a web of cracks and fissures was expanding with each following thud. More debris fell, clouds of dust raining down every time.

Jack watched, trying to figure out what was happening. The rhythmic, deliberate thudding against the ceiling from the outside indicated intent - it wasn't simply that the structure was collapsing. Someone was hammering through. Surely Edward didn't mean to drown everyone down? How could he re-build without his workforce? It made no sense?

At last, one final, enormous crash against the ceiling brought slabs of concrete pouring down, and revealed a huge hole in the buildings outer layer of Ryanium. It showed clearly now that a perfect hole had been cut through from the outside, and through the hole Jack could make out the interior of a pressurized chamber that had been secured onto the roof. Although too far up to recognize, he could see faces looking down, frantically arranging something up there. The figures began to lower large black hoses down through the hole, as if a nest of snakes was being unleashed. Each hose stopped about twenty feet from the roof of the Diner, and within second, they began to burp and gurgle. Each then erupted with a heavy flow of bright, glowing ADAM. Pure, red ADAM poured from the air down onto the Diner's roof, gushing like a wave of blood down through the holes in the ceiling, over the edge down into the alleys. In all his time in Rapture, Jack had never seen so much ADAM, not in one place.

Confused, he watched the flood of the luminescent goo run over his feet, and wondered what on earth this was about, what Edward's thinking was - how would this benefit him in any way, to dump so much raw ADAM? It could never be enough to drown them? And why not just use seawater if that was the goal? But as Jack watched the tide spill out over the crowds of waiting splicers, he saw their eyes glisten, their focus abandon all else - even each other, wives, children - in favor of the fountain of ADAM before them. They barely hesitated, before the addict in them all was unleashed ten fold, and they began to scramble for a taste of the drug. Their desperation to get to it, to scoop it up in their hands and douse themselves in it grew so fiercely, so quickly, they were soon fighting to get past each other. The animals in them all took over, and violence broke out the likes of which the city had not seen in decades.

"Citizens of Rapture! My family! I give a gift to you all now - a token of my love and appreciation of you all! Free ADAM is now available in Paupers Drop! I have just dropped one hundred thousand litres of ADAM for you all to enjoy - FREE! Feast upon it, for tomorrow we double our efforts to take back my city!" Edward's voice cried out over the public tannoy, and before he had even finished, the crash and banging of hundreds of the approaching splicers began on the Securis doors, shaft covers and drain hatches that fed into Paupers Drop. The sound of their frantic screams and wailing for ADAM could be heard even over the scuffling hoard inside.

"Christ - the mad son of a bitch is going to drive them all mad! They'll tear this place apart to get in and get to the ADAM! He's turned our evacuee's into an insatiable army!" Stanley wailed across at Jack, who stood in disbelief at the writhing sea of creature-like splicers that surrounded the Fishbowl Diner - people that had recently begun to return to some level of humanity even without the cure.

There was a colossal crash, when one of the huge Atlantic Express bulkheads overhead was blown from its fittings, and crashed to the floor. Almost two hundred twisted, screaming splicers broke through it, swinging from the walls by fishhooks, cartwheeling through the air with fire dancing from their hands as they burnt a path through the crowd to get at the ADAM that was pooling around the Diner as it deepened. The violence escalated again, Jack could only look on in despair, as splicers cut each other down, decapitated loved ones, electrified friends and strangers alike with a manner of plasmids, single-minded in their quest to consume as much of the ADAM as possible. He saw one woman licking the ADAM from the face of a head she'd only just swept from someones neck - then to groan in delight and shriek with accomplishment, before going after more.

He tried to call out, "Stop... please, don't..." The word came out, but the helplessness he felt meant they came out as little more than a whisper. "My god... Jesus Christ..." He cried, watching more killing, more mutilation. As he looked to find Stanley Poole, he found him under attack by a Brute Splicer, who held the scrawny little man up in one hand. "Not a sniff of ADAM on this little weasel, not worth my time little runt!" He bellowed. Stanley looked hopelessly to Jack, and in one expression, surrendered to his fate.

"Put him down!" Jack demanded, but in vain. The Brute closed his fist tight around Stanley's neck, and in a sharp twist, snapped his neck. Throwing Stanley's limp corpse down into the crowd, the Brute turned his sight on Jack. "We don't need you no more Mr Ryan... Carson's the guv'nor round 'ere now!" The towering man began to race towards Jack, a murderous glare on his face.

Jack had no escape, he had no time for a plan. Stunned and scared, he closed his eyes and waited for the impact of the Brute's clenching fist.

The blast of the shotgun made Jack flinch, and he opened his eyes in time to see the Brute's jaw blown clear off his face, and his body collapse into a heap. "Father!" Ellie called out as she leapt onto the roof of the diner and took hold of Jack by his waist. Hurrying him away, he saw their escape route - Beth was stood in the doorway through to the Atlantic Express, that the splicers had also broken through. She fired a pistol repeatedly at anyone that tried to approach her, until Ellie and Jack had jumped down from the Diner roof and scurried past her. With the insane bleating and wailing of the splicers in pursuit, the three of them raced through to the station, to a waiting Express Carriage. While Ellie took the controls and opened the station doors, Beth threw Jack into the salon area and slammed the carriage door behind them. Jack collapsed onto the carpeted floor and heaved for breath, his heart pounding so loud in his chest it made his vision blur.

He felt the rocking of the carriage as the pursuing splicers caught up and began to hammer on the windows and pry at the doors. But soon the carriage was rolling forwards, and sinking away from the cacophony into the silence of the sea as it pulled away from Paupers Drop.

"Who's he?" A little girls voice asked finally. "He's the one who's come to save us." Answered another. Rolling over onto his chest and looking up, Jack found the carriage to be filled with almost fifteen little girls, all staring down at his curiously, with large, round eyes and tiny, but beautiful smiles on their faces.


	50. Chapter Fifty

**Private Stingray Bathysphere - Outside Paupers Drop**

Edward sat and watched through the large glass canopy. They had settled the Bathysphere into a stationary position beside one of the large windows that looked in on Paupers Drop. He'd watched the ADAM flood in, and watched the carnage that followed unfold. He clasped both hands tightly, and sat back into the leather seat.

The excessive use of Plasmids, by a large concentration of splicers with a vast supply of fresh ADAM, had now resulted in a large fire - an inferno that was consuming the Fishbowl Diner and spreading quickly. He sighed, "It's going to take forever to get them under control again..."

Boxer just grunted in agreement. "Do see a return to normality after this shit-show?" He sarcastically snapped. Edward flinched at the abruptness of the remark.

"As long as Jack Ryan is dead, yes." He picked up his radio, and switched to Bear's frequency. "Excellent work Bear - you got us back on track just in time!"

Bear replied almost immediately. "Sir..." He was about to continue, but in his desperate bid to maintain the illusion of confidence, Edward interrupted.

"Now have your men take Dr Wells and my re-programmed Genetic Key back to my office in Hephaestus. We have some serious damage control to do... I want you meanwhile to personally lead the team to quell the fighting in Paupers Drop and make sure Jack Ryan is dead. I want his Body - you hear me?" His mind began to race away with itself, thinking of what he would do next. "

"Sir..." Bear tried again,

"Quickly Bear, I need you in there now. We need survivors - as many as possible, but Jack Ryan can't be one of them!" Edward demanded.

"Would you shut up, he's trying to tell you something, if you'll fuckin' listen to something other than your own voice..." Boxer growled, turning in his seat to glare at his master. Edward was stunned, and certainly scared. Whilst fighting to hide the fear Boxer filled him with, Edward turned up the volume on the radio.

"Sir... Wells is dead. Shot herself. She never turned control back over to you before she did it. We're stuck."

Edward took the news as well he would a punch to the face, and swore. "Fucking hell! Fuck!" He began to kick the floor and slap his own face in a rage, tearing at his hair. "What is it with these people? What is fucking wrong with them?" He shouted back down the radio at Bear.

"Round up whatever fuck-wit programmers you can find still alive down there and send them to me instead. But I need you to hurry up and get to the drop - bring me Jack Ryan's corpse, now!"

**Atlantic Express Depot**

The Express Carriage had taken them to the end of the line, and finally rolled into a maintenance bay in the central Atlantic Express hub. The lower levels were entirely flooded, and the lights were failing. The small group sat huddled together in the carriage, as Jack sat and watched the little girls playing with some number bricks and dolls they'd managed to hang on to.

"Do you ever remember being that young?" He asked the two Big Sisters sat beside him. Ellie had come along the most with expressing herself, and was the first to answer.

"Not really. I remember faces - a woman, and a man with strange eyes. A big nasty man with a shiny head who kept telling them off. I remember dreaming - I used to dream of angels all the time. Dancing angels." She quietly explained.

"I remember the lady with the glasses... she was scary. She told us to stay away from Eleanor. Eleanor used to be my best friend." Beth added.

"Are both of you ready to see the sun?" Jack asked, finally. "Ready to leave Rapture?"

The girls exchanged nervous looks, and didn't answer at first, looking down at their feet. The group of little sisters seemed to prick up also, listening eagerly.

"The surface is a bad place... scary." A little sister began to cry, clutching a teddy with only one eye. Jack remembered how Ryan and his ilk had worked hard to instill a fear of the surface world in the young, to stop them ever pining for it, and to prevent any childhood curiosity growing strong enough to turn into action when they were older.

"The bad people told you that, because they were scared of the surface. But it's better than Rapture, I promise you. It's very, very big! But there are lots of nice people, very nice people." Jack gently explained to the crying little sister, hoping his words would bolster Ellie and Beth's agreement already to follow him back to the surface. He turned to them, and made a decision.

"Girls, I need you to do something now for me. Take these little one, and get them to a Bathysphere. We must hope that whatever happened in Minerva's Den didn't end with them being locked back down. I then need you to take them up top-side, up to the surface."

The two Big Sisters looked terrified, "The surface, without you? We can't! The Bad people may get..." Beth began to protest.

"There will be no bad people when you get there Beth. There won't be anybody at first - we are a long way from the rest of the world. I need you to get these girls up to safety, away from Rapture. When you break through the surface, there will be a tall tower - a lighthouse." Jack explained.

"Like in the ride - like in ' _Journey to the surface'?"_ another little sister asked, worried.

"Yes! That's right, that very lighthouse." Jack smiled, and ruffled her hair playfully. "I need you all to wait for me there. Take some Pep Bars and water - any food you can find on your way to the Bathysphere. Then wait for me inside the lighthouse."


	51. Chapter Fifty-One

**Hepheastus Core - Office of Edward Carson**

The final shot rang out, and the last of the four Minerva's Den programmers fell dead to the floor. Edward lowered the pistol, and let himself stagger back until he was resting against the front of his desk. He had a piercing migraine, and had to keep wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"Fucking... idiots. Fucking... useless morons." He stammered, dropping the gun and hurrying around to sit in his chair where he could lean back to try and calm his nerves. Not one of the programmers that Bear had sent him could undo Dr Lydia Wells's work on The Thinker's access system. She'd locked it up good and tight, and when she ate that bullet, she'd thrown away the proverbial key.

How quickly his road to salvation had turned on him. He was out of control, out of idea's, with the weight of Rapture weighing down on his shoulders. He was loosing her - loosing Rapture. He couldn't stop his body trembling. He'd been so close - so close, to taking Andrew Ryan's throne! To proving he could do it, and in doing so, continuing the legacy of his beloved partner Sheridan, who above all else had aspired to the heights that for a brief moment, Edward had managed to reach.

Boxer and Bear were stood far across the room, whispering to each other, nodding towards the dead programmers, and then looking up towards the nervous wreck that was Edward Carson. He knew he had lost them, he'd lost control over the city, and that rendered all the promises he's made them broken. They'd failed to find Jack's body either among the charred remains of Paupers Drop, which made his grand design with the ADAM ambush all the more wasteful and ultimately, a colossal mistake.

"Now listen chaps, I know what we need to do next..." He called out, clearing his throat and forcing a confident tone. Neither looked remotely convinced, and cast each other a doubtful glance before walking over to the desk. "We need to work out a plan to re-distribute the Hephaestus and Arcadia workforces..."

Boxer slammed a fist down on the desk, making Edward jump so much he dropped the pistol down onto it. "What workforces? They left their posts when you drowned the drop in ADAM you fucking imbecile! There _is_ nobody left to maintain the core, nobody left to prune your fucking tree's for you. What semblance we had of a viable team you destroyed... all we have left are wild animals so off their tits on an ADAM high we couldn't catch up with them even with a sports boost Plasmid and rocket launcher! All of this, and still we couldn't find goddamned Jack Ryan" The large man leaned over the desk, until his shadow encompassed Edward's shrinking, feotal figure. "And even if we did round some of 'em up, what you got to bribe 'em with now? There's enough ADAM left for maybe... a week?"

"Less..." the women's voice carried even from behind the glass divide that stood between the main office and the entrance hall. Dr Violet Arenberg appeared, clutching a dead sea slug that she threw out onto the floor in front of them.

"You used up all the ADAM we held in reserve, and now we've lost all our little Sisters. Every little girl we had - vanished. I have nowhere to implant the sea slugs... they are all dying. Just like this one."

"Then find them! Surely you can track their protectors? The Big Daddies?" Edward sat up and asked. Furious that she would be so presumptuous to just storm in with such disrespect. He thought he had taught her a good enough lesson earlier that day.

"Some have come back, others didn't. With the spliced-up mob you've unleashed Mr Carson, I'm not surprised if all the little girls have been killed by now." Arenberg threw Edward a look of accusation and disgust. How tired he was of all of this now, of the constant battle against such people.

"Boxer, Bear. I need you to go with the doctor and find the sisters. We can settle our differences later - but without ADAM, I think you'll agree, nothing is going to improve." He made sure he met their eyes directly, his last, exhausting attempt to show some level of authority. Boxer scoffed, and looked down on Edward.

"We'll go, for now. This is not settled. When we get back..." He threateningly agreed. "When you get back." Edward nodded, agreeing to a discussion he never intended to have. As the two men turned to follow Dr Arenberg, Edward retrieved the pistol from his desk.

He got off his first shot at Arenberg, striking the back of her neck instantly. She briefly cried out, before falling down. Bear had swivelled almost ninety degrees on his heels when Edward's second shot broke through his left cheek bone, burrowed through his face and exploded out of his right ear. "Fuuuuuck!" He groaned, before he blacked out and collapsed.

"You cunt!" Boxer screamed, before rolling out from beneath Edward's third shot, which harmless struck a pillar. Boxer took off down the corridor towards Hephaestus Core.

"Shit!" Edward spat, before pulling open his desk drawer and taking out the shotgun he'd tucked away inside. Throwing down the spent pistol, he took off after Boxer.

For such a burly figure, Boxer could move. Edward briefly caught sight of him on the other side of Rapture Central Control, getting off one shot that again missed the target. He cursed, and continued to pursue the splicer. He wasn't sure anymore of what he would do next, how he would regain control of Rapture, but he was certain he would never again have control over Boxer - nor would he have Bear. And that was why they had to die, and quickly.

As he came out into the massive central chamber of the core, Edward could already hear the overhead scrambling of spider splicers, crawling like vermin over the cities sacred heart. He couldn't see them, but they sniggered and jeered as they circled overhead. He let off one shot from the shotgun as a warning;

"If you fucker's don't get back to work this moment, then you won't ever, _ever,_ taste another drop of ADAM!" He cried. There was more sniggering - who was he kidding. They were animals again, now and forever. He could no more reason with them than he could a boa constrictor. Edward pressed forward, his shotgun poised for the kill.


	52. Chapter Fifty-Two

**Hepheastus - Central Control**

Jack was alone now, away from the sisters for whom he had to keep up pretense, and so, he let himself cry. He'd been so very close, to completing the mission Tenenbaum had given him, on a scale that perhaps even she hadn't expected. He was poised on the verge to save hundreds - he'd been moments away. It may have made up for Grace Holloway's terrible death, if the events that had followed her instructions had saved the lives of the people she cared so much about.

But all had been lost, the drop had been lost. Most of the people he'd been fighting to save, were dead. How he had failed them. Failed Grace. But he took some comfort now in knowing he may be able to save the girls, the most innocent and worthy of rescue out of the lot. They would soon be on their way to the surface, and with or without him, he hoped they would find their way. Tenenbaum would see to it that they got the ADAM cure, as his supply had burned up with Paupers Drop.

He had of course been tempted, after the destruction of the drop, just to take the girls to a bathysphere himself and leave with them - but a recurring, profound emotion had continued to plague him. Guilt. Guilt that he had abandoned Rapture once before, and let all of this happen. He knew he couldn't right the wrongs of the past, and even if he chose to stay this time, there was so little left of the city, it truly was beyond saving. In Grace's own words, it was better the city drowned. Jack was choosing to put the city down now, rather then let it limp on in pain and anguish - or risk the cities horrors be unleashed upon the world, should some splicer or worse make it up to the surface.

No, this was going to end.

As Jack turned a corner through to the large chamber that had always stuck in his memory as 'Ryan's Trophy Room', he heard the sound of running footsteps. Cautiously moving forward, he looked ahead through the doorway to Rapture Central Control and what had been Andrew Ryan's private quarters. In a blaze of fire, the enormous splicer that he had seen constantly following Edward Carson came running out of the doorway, hurling fistfuls of Incinerate towards Jack.

"Fuck off and die you cunt!" Jack turned to run, only to find the way he had come ablaze, having been struck by a fireball. "Gotcha!" Boxer laughed as he came bearing down on Jack.

Jack turned and instead began to race through towards the Geothermal Core, Boxer close on his heels. He made it to the top level of the enormous central cavern, bolting around the circular platform as fast as his aching legs could carry him. Seeing a turn to his right, Jack jumped behind a broken Circus of Value machine, hiding himself between its back and the railings that looked out over the rotating harmonic core.

"Come out, come out! One of you cunt's better come out soon!" Boxer was burying an EVE Hypo into his arm, getting himself high and ready for a fight. Jack tried to stay silent, blind to what was going on around the other side of the vending machine. It seemed to him things weren't going entirely to plan for Edward here either - Boxer appeared to be on a blind rampage!

The vending machine suddenly rose into the air, and was hurled over Jack's head into the core. The machine struck the large cylinders that funneled up the boiling water and jammed the rotating mechanism. Boxer stood triumphantly over Jack, Electrobolt fizzling at the ready from his palms.

"Awww... Carson's boys only just fixed that thing...what a bloody shame!" He cackled sarcastically, "We've been on quite the ride looking for you, Mr Ryan..." He sneered, raising his hands and increasing the intensity of the electrobolt he was about to send Jack's way.

As Jack felt his end drawing close, he sat upright and faced Boxer down. He was ready. When he then saw Edward Carson step out behind Boxer, he felt his end was ensured, twice as certain. It was the first time the two men had seen each other face to face in days, since before their butting heads had turned to an all out war. But strangely, Edward seemed to offer Jack something in the way of a smile, before raising a shotgun, and unloading six shots into Boxer.

"Fuck, no!" Boxer bellowed, flying forward under the momentum of the shells in his back and his own weight. Jack rolled out the way a second before Boxer broke through the railings, and unleashing the charged surge of electrobolt, fell into the core. The wave of electricity that erupted through the core enhanced the damage already done, and in an flash, the core broke apart, and exploded.

The initial blast threw Jack and Edward across the platform, both of them struck the rock wall and fell to the floor, dazed and blinded by the strike. As the massive structure began to entirely collapse, the cavern ceiling began to come down too, tearing away pressure pipes and ripping out emergency control vents.

Jack began to come to, blinking quickly trying to encourage his vision to clear. He realized he was being dragged by his neck, catching sight behind them of the Core filling with steam and boiling water just before a Securis door closed. Pulling himself to his feet, he looked to Edward, who had been dragging him out.

"It's fine, I can run!" He called out. Abandoning for a moment all between them, Jack and Edward raced from the Central Core. Despite the relative silence of the tunnels, they knew Hephaestus was compromised. The sea floor was rumbling and trembling, and pipes all around them were bursting. They had both reached the bathysphere station, when Edward stopped in his tracks.

Jack looked back, "Come on, we need to get clear!" He snapped,

"I can't just do nothing - the city needs the power! I have to try and do something!" Edward called out over the noise.

"There is nothing anyone can do about that! It's gone! The core is destroyed!" Jack took hold of Edwards jacket and pulled him onward to the waiting bathysphere. Edward began to pull away again, "No! I can't just do nothing... I have to try!"

Jack pulled his arm back, and struck Edward hard across the face, knocking him out cold. The tremors and mounting explosions began to tear the building apart, and the ocean quickly began to break through weakened walls. Jack had barely enough time to throw Edward and himself into the submersible, his feet already below water by the time he managed to get the door sealed. As Hephaestus imploded beneath the weight of the sea, their Bathysphere calmly sank away.


	53. Chapter Fifty-Three

**Chapter 53**

**Olympus Heights - Tramway outside the Bathysphere Station**

Jack sat on a wooden bench, and watched through the glass. After everything, he wanted to feel pleased. He wanted to congratulate himself on surviving, and bringing about the end of the Rapture nightmare. But he couldn't.

Through the glass of the tunnel, he watched as the lights went out. The shock wave created by Hephaestus had toppled buildings like domino's, and the sea was growing murky with debris and dust. Yet still through it, he could follow as the loss of power was hitting the city, district by district. Some buildings were lasting longer than others, running off of emergency batteries for anything up to an hour before finally giving out. Already the familiar, soothing pulsing of the pumps had stopped even here in Olympus heights, and the humming of the air vents had stopped. How quickly the air was turning cold, soon it would be freezing.

Edward began to stir at last, laid out on the bench next to him. He groaned for a while, and pulled a hand up to nurse his cheek where Jack had hit him. Jack watched him as he woke. How helpless he now was, such a pitiful sight really. In a strange way, he felt towards Edward at that moment how he'd felt towards Grace when he'd sat by her bedside - as a victim. Certainly there was hatred and anger at him, but Jack could understand Edward was the product of a life in Rapture.

Edward slowly sat up, not even realizing for a moment he was sat side by side with Jack. His first care was to look through the glass and watch the city. He sighed, and looked on as some of the nearer buildings fell dark.

"How quiet it is." He murmured. "Everything is so calm, in the end."

Jack looked at the side of his face, and shared his mourning. "It had to happen you know. For that, I am truly sorry." Jack gently spoke, reaching out and laying a hand softly on top of Edwards. Edward didn't flinch, but looked down at the gesture. Returning his gaze to his dying city, he continued;

"I wanted it all to go, so differently."

Jack nodded; "I never doubted that you thought you were doing what was necessary. But you were still clinging to the dream of Rapture so tightly, that it obscured your view of what was really going on. What you were really doing to these people, to yourself." Jack wanted to shout at Edward, he so badly wanted to throttle him and curse him. He knew he had every reason even to kill him, as he had set out to do. But this wasn't the same Edward any more, this was someone else. This was a broken man, stuck in the dream of his past.

"But oh, what a dream it was. It was a dream worth every moment. Before the fall... before the war... There was once great happiness in Rapture, for some, at least. Including myself."

Jack took his hand from Edward's and lifted it onto his shoulder. "But for how long?"

"Long enough!" Edward raised his voice slightly to emphasize his point. "Everyone was so busy, rushing around so fast, so eager to make the next dollar and keep up with their neighbours, that they didn't ever stop to just look. To look at the beauty we had accomplished." He began to smile, and rose up from the bench, approaching the glass, reaching out to touch it, as if he could reach through and embrace the city. "Every day, Sheridan would be pouring over his diary, or a contract for some new venture he was embroiled in. I'd have to drag him from his seat to the window, to stand there with me. Just to look at this beautiful place."

There was a sudden boom, somewhere below, but close. The tunnel rocked violently, and the lights began to dim. At one end of the tunnel, Jack could see the buildings were beginning to sway in different directions, breaking the seal on the tunnel. Water began to seep through the seams. The tunnel groaned loudly.

He looked back at Edward, who was walking away from him towards Mercury Suites. Catching him up, Jack took his arm in his hand to pull him towards the Bathysphere station. "Look... why don't you come back up to the surface with me?" He couldn't believe he was making the offer, but he had already lost too many lives to this city. This one, damaged soul could possibly still be worth saving.

Edward stopped, and turned to him with a smile. "That's kind of you, after all we've been through together. But I think I'm just going to go home now. I'm very tired." He pulled away, and began to climb the steps up towards Mercury Suites.

"Edward, the city is going, she's breaking up! The explosion from Hephaestus - it's tearing up the ocean floor!"

Edward didn't seem to hear him at all. Sea water began to flood down the steps from the collapsing tunnel, and washed over Edwards feet as he climbed the steps. Still, he didn't flinch. As he reached the top step, he turned and looked down at Jack one final time.

"Do you think the world will ever know the truth about this place? What we accomplished?" He gazed up through the glass into the sea with a deep expression.

"I honestly don't know. There will always be rumors I'm sure..." Jack called up to him.

"Rumors will do." Edward then smiled at Jack again, and winked, once. Then he walked off into Mercury Suites.

Another explosion rocked the tunnel so badly this time that an entire pane of glass broke away, and a pillar of ocean came crashing down. Realizing he was out of time to pursue Edward any further, Jack rushed back down to the waiting Bathysphere. Beating the water by a few feet, He quickly set a course for the surface.

**Atlantic Ocean - The Lighthouse**

Jack's bathysphere had broken the surface into the sunlight some way from the lighthouse. The door was open, and the fresh air had filled the cabin. Jack lay on the floor, curled up, his knees tucked into his chest, as he cried. He screamed aloud and wept, for his father's city, and the thousands he had failed to save. He was free again, and so pleased to be, but that only seemed to build upon his guilt.

Gently, the ocean currant carried the Bathysphere closer to the lighthouse, and as it bounced and turned on the water, Jack came to look upon the worn, tired visage of the lighthouse. As he wiped away his tears, he noticed the tiny faces lined up along the steps. Each was smiling, pointing up at the sky and waving. Two taller figures waited at the bottom of the steps, their metallic suits discarded in pieces on the rocks.

Finally, he managed a smile. They looked so like his own daughters had done, all those years ago. They had been worth leaving Rapture for, and so too he knew these new girls would be. In time, he hoped that seeing the life he'd afforded these girls would help him absolve himself of his guilt. He would return to this place only one more time, to destroy the lighthouse and wipe this place off the map forever.

**Fortesque Penthouse - Mercury Suites - Olympus Heights**

The water was rushing around his knee's, and the lights were so dim now that Edward couldn't make out his surroundings. He was home, in the living room, standing in his favorite spot in all of Rapture, by the window that had once overlooked the entire city. The lights were gone, the view was gone, the city, was gone. The building around him was twisting, tilting, beginning to come down as it's worn aluminium foundations collapsed under the weight of the now flooded structure.

Despite there being nothing but darkness that now enveloped him, Edward chose to close his eyes. Reaching out, he could touch the glass window, and in is mind, he could recall the beautiful view of Rapture below, lit up in all its glory as it had been that first day he had arrived. He smiled, at peace now, alone with his city.

**THE END**


End file.
